Russia not interested in bringing back its prisoners of war – Ukraine's human rights commissioner

Dmytro Lubinets, Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) Commissioner for Human Rights, believes that if Russia were truly interested in retrieving its prisoners of war (POWs), an all-for-all swap would have happened long ago.

Source: Ukrinform news agency, citing Lubinets

Quote: "As a person constantly involved in these processes, I can confirm that Ukraine has never refused to swap POWs.

On the contrary, we are constantly coming up with new initiatives.

If the Russians were interested in bringing back their POWs, we would have done it long ago. It seems that they simply do not need them [POWs – ed.]."

Details: The official called Russia's attempts to shift the blame for the disruption of the next POW swap to Ukraine as absolute Russian propaganda.

Lubinets added that he had personally repeatedly requested – through intermediaries and directly – that Russia hand over the bodies of fallen Ukrainian heroes and heroines to Ukraine. He confirmed that there is still no information about the plane that had supposedly been carrying Ukrainian POWs and which Ukraine had allegedly shot down.

Quote: "If they claim that our heroes were killed, please give us the bodies. Suppose the Russians were interested in a transparent investigation of this incident. In that case, they would, firstly, immediately allow international experts to the crash site, secondly, allow international experts to conduct examinations long ago, and thirdly, they would hand over the bodies as soon as possible. They are delaying this, probably because there are still a lot of questions."

Details: The official pointed to the similarity of the situation with the mass murder of Ukrainian POWs in the Olenivka POW camp: "This, in my opinion, is the same attempt to discredit Ukraine by the Russian Federation as the one we saw in the summer of 2022 when the Russians killed prisoners of war in Olenivka. It’s exactly the same. [Russia claimed] that all this happened with the help of weapons handed over to us by international partners: it was HIMARS [multiple-launch rocket systems] in Olenivka, Patriot [air defence systems] in the plane [incident]."

Lubinets noted that several countries are helping Ukraine with the POW swaps. "But we hope we will get additional leverage over Russia and automatically get new good results," he said.

The commissioner noted that this year, the first constituent meeting of the international platform on bringing back civilian hostages was held, attended by over 40 countries and international organisations. Many partners are involved in efforts to bring back children abducted by Russia. This item from Ukraine's Peace Formula is included in the list of issues to be discussed at the first Peace Summit in Switzerland.

Quote: "A lot of partners have been involved in point 4 [of the Peace Formula - ed.]. A total of 37 countries have officially joined the international coalition for bringing back Ukrainian children. We have a public communicator – Qatar, and the Vatican is involved, and there are many non-public communicators."

Details: Lubinets said he believes the pressure on the Russian Federation by the international community will help achieve the result.

Background: Lubinets labelled the request of facilitation of POW swaps made by Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia's Commissioner for Human Rights, a provocation ahead of the Peace Summit.

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