Yermak on the 1000-for-1000 exchange: Ukraine has done its part, Russia should hurry up
Ukraine has completed its part of the preparatory work for a 1000-for-1000 exchange with Russia. This was reported by the head of the Office of the President Andriy Yermak.
"Regarding the 1000 for 1000 exchange, Ukraine has done its part of the preparatory work, Russia should speed up with this," he said .
Earlier, the Russian dictator's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said that Russia had allegedly handed over a list of people to be exchanged to Ukraine, but had not received a similar list from Kyiv. He noted that Moscow is "waiting".
Later, however, the Kremlin reported that it had received a counter-list for a thousand-for-thousand prisoner exchange.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy held a meeting on May 22 on the process of preparing the exchange of prisoners with Russia. He noted that contacts with the Russians had taken place and that Ukraine is currently checking information about each prisoner included in the lists of the Russians.
- A large prisoner exchange is the only real agreement from the May 16 Ukrainian-Russian meeting in Istanbul ( more about the talks here ).
- The GUR reported that the exchange is already underway. The SBU also reported that has already started preparations for the exchange. CNN's Turkish source noted that the process will include three categories of prisoners – children, civilians and military, but this was not officially reported.
- GUR chief Budanov said that the exchange of prisoners could take place as early as next week. Head of the Russian delegation Medynsky claimed that the exchange would take place in "the coming days" .
