During the meeting of the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group for resolving the situation in Donbas in Minsk, the Ukrainian side has again demanded that the Russian Federation provide an official response to the proposal to exchange Russian criminals for Ukraine’s political prisoners, however, the Russian side completely blocked the issue of the release of hostages, First Deputy Speaker of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada and Ukraine’s envoy to the TCG humanitarian subgroup Iryna Herashchenko has said.

“The Ukrainian side today has once again appealed to the representatives of the Russian Federation to immediately provide a formal response to the proposal to hand over to them 23 Russian criminals in exchange for political prisoners of the Kremlin. We are also ready to pardon several dozen separatists in exchange for 20 Ukrainians, civil and military – who are illegally and for years kept in the occupied Donbas,” Herashchenko wrote on Facebook on Nov. 6 evening.