MOSCOW, August 3. /TASS/. Russia’s Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights has received a letter from Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsperson Lyudmila Denisova, asking to swap the Russian national, Alexei Sedikov, jailed in Ukraine, for a Ukrainian citizen convicted in Russia, the Council said on Friday.

In a message sent to the Council’s Chair Mikhail Fedotov, Denisova wrote that on July 31 she visited the Buchanskaya penal colony to inspect conditions of Sedikov’s imprisonment. According to the Ukrainian ombudsperson, Sedikov did not complain but he is in urgent need of a leg operation, which cannot be performed in the penal colony’s hospital. There is no money to pay for medical services at institutions reporting to Ukraine’s Healthcare Ministry, she noted.

"On August 2, 2018, I received a letter from the above-mentioned citizen of the Russian Federation, Sedikov, addressed to President of the Russian Federation [Vladimir] Putin, in which he asks to transfer him to the Russian Federation," says a copy of Denisova’s letter posted on the Russian human rights council.

"I have sent that appeal of Sedikov to Russia’s President Putin for a corresponding decision to be given," she added.