In Ukraine, thousands of families of soldiers or civilians living in occupied territory sometimes have no news of their loved ones for months or even years. They do not know if they are in captivity, if they survived or if their bodies remained on the battlefield. The publication of a new list of prisoners’ names, the existence of which was announced on Friday October 25, will allow us to find out more. kyiv wants to speed up the process of exchanging prisoners with Moscow.
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From our correspondent in kyiv, Emmanuelle Chaze
After a visit to QatarUkrainian Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets announced that mediation by the Gulf country between kyiv and Moscow had enabled him to receive a list of names of Ukrainian prisoners who had so far been missing. A breakthrough, while thousands of families wait for news of their loved ones, of whom they have sometimes not heard for years.
The number of missing civilians and soldiers since the start of the war is estimated at around 55,000. Although we do not yet know the number of people on this list or their state of health, we also learned from Dmytro Lubinets that he is returning to Ukraine with letters from prisoners to their families.
The humanitarian situation of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the hands of Moscow is extremely precarious. In Russian prisons, men and women are tortured, starved and kept in unsanitary conditions. This is also the reason why an acceleration of prisoner exchanges was discussed in Qatar, which has already served as a mediator in particular by helping on the return of Ukrainian children illegally deported and detained in Russia.
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