DONETSK, September 08. /ITAR-TASS/. The swap of prisoners on the “all for all” basis may begin on September 9, Deputy Prime Minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Andrei Purgin said on Monday.

“First exchanges may happen tomorrow, and I hope very much that from Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, a mass swap will begin,” he told ITAR-TASS.

Both sides are preparing for the process, he said.

“In Kharkiv now is already some number of our people, whom the Ukrainian side has prepared; and we continue the checking,” he said. “I hope the swap will be made in hundreds.”

The swap of prisoners is a problem, which may be settled first of all, he continued.

“If we fail the all-for-all swap, we are not worth a farthing. Then European institutions would not be happy either, as this condition has been suggested for two or three months now, but every time it fails,” the deputy prime minister said.

Earlier on Monday, the republic’s acting Defense Minister Leonid Baranov said: “Kiev quotes about 200-300 prisoners.” “However, they still do not have detailed lists. Besides, about one thousand of our supporters and of Donbas’ civilians are unaccounted for, but in reality many of them are prisoners, too. We are releasing over one thousand in exchange to our three hundred people, and we do not want to be cheated.”

On September 3, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin suggested a seven-item plan to settle the crisis in Ukraine after a phone conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart Petro Poroshenko a day earlier.

On September 5 in Minsk, a meeting of the Contact Group on Ukraine, which featured representatives of Kiev, Ukraine’s south-eastern regions, OSCE and Russia, offered a plan for peace settlement and agreed on a ceasefire.