Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists have begun to exchange more than 300 prisoners in the war-torn east of the country, in the largest such swap since the insurgency broke out in 2014.

The exchange of prisoners was being carried out at a checkpoint near Horlivka, a city in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine handed over 246 prisoners in exchange for 74 people who had been taken captive by separatist forces.

Journalists, activists and bloggers who had been accused of spying or treason were among those released. Twenty people who had been held in Ukrainian government custody refused to return to pro-Russia breakaway regions, Kiev said.



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Family and friends of the freed Ukrainian prisoners gathered at Kiev’s Borispol airport where the former captives were expected to arrive on Wednesday evening.

“Nothing is more important than to bring our people home,” said Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko.



The prisoner swap was confirmed on Monday when Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox church, met with pro-Russia separatist leaders at Moscow’s Danilov monastery.

In a phone call in November, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, had urged the separatist leaders to exchange prisoners with the Ukrainian government. Although the Kremlin insists the Russian army is not in eastern Ukraine, international observers say Russian soldiers and military hardware are involved in fighting in the region.

The conversation was Putin’s first official contact with the heads of the breakaway republics, and came about at the urging of Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian business tycoon and politician who is close to the Kremlin. Putin is godfather to Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A prisoner waves during the exchange. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters

Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the Kremlin-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, said on Wednesday that more prisoners would be exchanged in the coming months. But a recent escalation in hostilities has quashed hopes of an imminent end to the conflict, which is now the longest in Europe since the second world war.

More than 10,000 people have been killed and 1.5 million displaced in eastern Ukraine since fighting erupted there almost four years ago. A ceasefire that was supposed to go into effect on 23 December was shattered within hours when a Ukrainian solider was killed. Monitors from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) have since reported hundreds of ceasefire violations, and at least seven Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in the past week.

Both sides accuse each other of breaking the terms of the truce, which had been agreed during talks between representatives of Russia, Ukraine, separatist forces, and the OSCE in Minsk, Belarus, on 20 December. A number of similar ceasefires have failed to take hold since the start of the conflict.

The United States said last week that it was sending lethal weapons to Kiev to help it fight pro-Russia separatist forces. Although the US state department did not specify what weaponry it was sending, reports said Kiev would receive American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles.

Donald Trump’s decision to arm Ukraine was criticised by Russian officials, who said it would derail peace efforts and lead to further loss of life. The Obama administration had consistently refused to approve Kiev’s requests for US lethal weaponry because it said the move risked provoking a dangerous escalation in the conflict.

Poroshenko insists Ukraine will use the weapons in a purely defensive manner to “rebuff the aggressor”.