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Russian human rights commissioner meets with detained journalist in Kiev

KIEV, August 24. /TASS/. Russia’s human rights commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova, on Friday met with Russian journalist Kirill Vyshinsky, who is currently being held in a pretrial detention facility in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Ukraine’s Vesti media outlet reported.

"The purpose of Moskalkova’s visit was to convince Vyshinsky to give his consent to an exchange which he earlier publicly rejected," Vesti cited Artur Zhurbin, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Judicial Control NGO, as saying.

Vyshinsky’s lawyer, Andrei Domansky, declined to comment on the information for reasons that he was not engaged in negotiations on the possible swap.

"An exchange requires legal grounds, which are absent at the moment," he said.

A spokesperson for the Russian embassy in Ukraine earlier told TASS earlier that Moskalkova had arrived to Kiev on a one-day visit on Friday morning.

Head of the Russian Center for Current Politics Alexei Chesnakov, who is close to the negotiation process, earlier mentioned the possibility of a detainee exchange that could involve Ukrainian sailors arrested in Russia. Valentin Rybin, the lawyer of three Russians jailed in Ukraine (Maxim Odintsov, Alexander Baranov and Yevgeny Mefedov), in turn, said that legal paperwork for their exchange was underway. According to the lawyer, exchange lists contain other names as well.

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