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Developments in eastern Ukraine

Donetsk militia release five Ukrainian detainees

There are four servicemen and one volunteer among them

© EPA/ROMAN PILIPEY

KIEV, September 14. /ITAR-TASS/. Five persons were released by the militia in eastern Ukraine under the agreement with the Kiev authorities to exchange prisoners of war, Ukrainian president’s press secretary Svyatoslav Tsegolko said on Sunday.

“Four servicemen and one volunteer have been released,” he told the television chanel 5.

Earlier, First Vice-Premier Andrei Purgin of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) said that an exchange of prisoners of war between Donetsk militia and the Ukrainian army would take place on Sunday evening.

DPR representatives earlier said that captured militias and Ukrainian troops would be exchanged under the formula “65 for 65.”

On Friday, September 12, the first official exchange of prisoners of war took place, with 37 people released by each of the parties. The swap took place near the settlement of Konstantinovka some 60 kilometres south of Donetsk.

In line with the Minsk agreements reached within the framework of the Contact Group on Ukraine on September 5, the exchange of prisoners of war is to be done in the format “all for all.”

The exact number of detainees is not yet known. The head of the DPR’s committee on refugee and POW affairs said earlier that the militia had “up to a thousand Ukrainian prisoners of war.” The lists of DPR activists kept in custody by the Ukrainian forces are being specified.

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Eastern Ukraine

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