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Donetsk Republic hopes for release of over 800 people under prisoner exchange plan

“The list we drafted contains the names of more than 800 people and it is getting longer and longer,” deputy speaker of the DPR parliament said

DONETSK, December 13. /TASS/. Authorities of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic hope for a release from Ukrainian captivity of more than 800 people under the ‘everyone for everyone’ formula, Denis Pushilin, a deputy speaker of the DPR parliament said on Saturday.

“The list we drafted contains the names of more than 800 people and it is getting longer and longer,” he told the Donetsk News Agency.

Pushilin admitted that the self-proclaimed republic’s government did not have full information on all the political prisoners “whom we must recover” from imprisonment by the Ukrainian forces.

The DPR list contains the names of 220 people who are subject to investigations by the Security Service of Ukraine, he said. “Add to this the 120 or so people who have already stood trial. We’re told /by Ukrainian representatives - TASS/ it’ll be very difficult to resolve the issue of their liberation procedurally.”

Pushilin also said the Contact Group for Ukraine had not coordinated the date of the next meeting in Minsk yet, adding that the Ukrainian media reports on an ostensible decision to hold it on December 19 were not true to fact.

Parties to the September 5 meeting of the Contact Group in Minsk, including representatives of the Kiev government, officials of the eastern regions, and envoys of the European security organization OSCE and Russia coordinated a plan of peace settlement of the conflict and reached agreement on a ceasefire.

At its next meeting on September 20, the Contact Group adopted a memorandum on ceasefire. It consisted of nine points, like a ban on the use of all types of weaponry and a pullback of heavy weapons to a distance of 15 km away from the line of contact.

Control over practical actions under the memorandum was vested in the OSCE. The document was signed by the OSCE representative in Ukraine Heidi Tagliavini, Ukraine’s former President Leonid Kuchma who represented the Kiev government, Russian Ambassador to Ukraine Mikhail Zurabov, DPR Prime Minister Alexander Zakharchenko, and the leader of the Lugansk People’s Republic, Igor Plotnitsky.