LUGANSK, August 18. /TASS/. The prospects for an immediate prisoner exchange between Ukraine and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR, LPR) are vague, LPR head Leonid Pasechnik said in an interview with TASS.

"A prisoner exchange is one of the issues stonewalled by Ukraine," he noted. "The stumbling block is Kiev’s reluctance to provide information about those whose release is sought by the [Donbass] republics."

According to Pasechnik, Kiev does not want to interact with the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, as specified by the Minsk agreements. "The logic is clear: it is unrealistic to implement one clause of the agreements and refuse to fulfill the others. In that case, they will have to conduct negotiations on political issues with us, restore economic ties and stop the shelling," he explained.

Pasechnik noted that both the population of the Donbass republics and Ukraine’s residents fell victim to "certain interests of the authorities in Kiev."

"I repeat that the logic (of the Kiev authorities — TASS) is understandable but very cynical. That’s why any prospects for a speedy exchange are fairly vague," the LPR head said.

The exchange of individuals held by the parties to the conflict in Donbass is one of the core clauses of the Minsk agreements. According to the document, prisoner swaps should be based on an ‘all-for-all’ arrangement. The commitment to that principle was reaffirmed at the Normandy Four (France, Germany, Russia, Ukraine) summit held in Paris in early December 2019. After that, the first large-scale prisoner swap between the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Ukraine in two years took place on December 29. Another exchange took place on April 16, 2020. However, the issue of exchanging "all for all" has remained unresolved.