WP told about contacts of representatives of Russia and Ukraine
Representatives of Russia and Ukraine, despite the active hostilities and the lack of peace negotiations, are still in contact with each other and mainly solve humanitarian issues, including the exchange of prisoners and the bodies of the dead and the return of Ukrainian children taken to Russia. back to Ukraine. The Washington Post writes about it with reference to the Ukrainian participants in the negotiations.
In some cases, negotiations take place with the participation of mediators, including Turkey, the Vatican, the countries of the Persian Gulf, and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Sometimes Russian and Ukrainian representatives communicate in person, in particular in Istanbul, or by phone.
Dmitry Usov, the representative of the foreign intelligence of Ukraine, who heads the coordination center on the question of exchange of prisoners, confirmed the existence of communication channels with Russia.
According to Oleg Kotenko, who was previously one of the representatives of Ukraine at the negotiations on the exchange of bodies of the killed, about 1,700 bodies were returned to Ukraine. The Russian authorities do not provide their statistics. Exchanges, as a rule, about
With the mediation of the Vatican, Ukraine is negotiating with Russia about the release of captured civilians, such as cooks or doctors. No results of this mission are reported.
Qatar, along with Turkey and Saudi Arabia, acts as a mediator on the issue of the return of children taken from Ukraine. According to the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Verkhovna Rada, Dmitry Lubynts, his negotiations on this issue with Russian Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova did not bring results. Since March of this year, however, small groups of children began to return to Ukraine even without parents or guardians coming to Russia for them, which is usually required by the Russian authorities. They cross the border between Belarus and Ukraine. The article notes that this became possible after the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for the arrest of Vladimir Putin on suspicion of deporting children. Lubynets noted that it is not yet time to talk about the details.
