Ukraine, Russia exchange latest prisoners

The Russian and Ukrainian governments executed their latest high-profile prisoner exchange on June 14 as retired military factory director Yuriy Soloshenko and Crimean EuroMaidan activist Hennadiy Afanasyev returned to their native Ukraine while separatists Elena Glischinskaya and Vitaly Didenko were expatriated to Russia. The two presidents pardoned their respective prisoners. Glischinskaya and Didenko were accused by the Ukrainian government of organizing a separatist Bessarabian People’s Republic in the territory of the Odesa region, which borders the Moldovia’s breakaway republic of Transnistria.

Zenon Zawada: The emerging trend from these latest prisoner exchanges (including Nadiya Savchenko’s May 25 release) is that Ukraine is releasing widely accepted to have committed criminal acts while the Russians are trading away Ukrainians who are widely accepted to have been falsely accused. This fact alone shows that Russia has the upper hand in the conflict.

The other noteworthy aspect to the exchanges is that the Minsk accords are slowly being fulfilled (despite Russian denials that some of its prisoner releases are not related). Both Putin and Poroshenko are working to bring about the Donbas local elections.