Russia to use war prisoners in election campaign, Gerashchenko says

The Russian government is ignoring Ukrainian requests
to negotiate war prisoner exchanges in order to use them as political props in
the Ukrainian presidential election campaign, said in July 30 Iryna
Gerashchenko, Ukraine’s lead negotiator on prisoner exchanges in the Trilateral
Contact Group. Ukraine has offered Russia to exchange 36 prisoners, drawing no
response since March, Gerashchenko wrote on her Facebook page. The Kremlin has
also rejected all proposals to release Ukrainians from the occupied
territories, wrote Gerashchenko, who is also the first deputy speaker of
parliament.

“All this leads to the notion that the Kremlin is
awaiting the start of the Ukrainian election campaign, after which it will
attempt to play not only on the topic of prisoners, but more widely Donbas, the
war and peace, pressing towards ‘direct negotiations’ with [the self-declared
republics] and demonstrating favor towards certain candidates and parties that
are ready to negotiate on the Kremlin’s conditions, not from Ukraine’s
position,” she wrote.

Zenon Zawada: We agree with Gerashchenko’s assessment of the situation. We expect
Ukraine’s Russian-oriented political parties, the Opposition Bloc and For Life,
will fulfill Kremlin plans to use topics related to the war, including prisoner
exchanges, to influence public opinion in the Kremlin’s advantage. That way, a
powerful pro-Kremlin force can emerge from the October 2019 parliamentary
elections (following the March presidential vote, which is most likely to
result in the victory of a pro-Western candidate). We expect the Kremlin will
be successful in producing an influential Russian-oriented faction in Ukraine’s
parliament next year.