Ukraine is working to resume the exchange of prisoners with Russia, hoping for the release of 1,200 Ukrainians, President Volodymyr Zelensky and his Security Council chief said.
“We are … counting on the resumption of exchanges,” Zelensky said in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app on Sunday. “Many meetings, negotiations and calls are now devoted to this.”
His security chief, Rustem Umerov, said on Saturday that he had held consultations in Turkiye and the UAE, with the support of Kyiv’s partners, on resuming the process of exchanges.
“As a result of these negotiations, the parties agreed to return to the Istanbul agreements,” he said. “This concerns the release of 1,200 Ukrainians,” Umerov said in a statement on Telegram.
There was no immediate comment from Moscow to Ukraine’s statements.
The Istanbul agreements are prisoner-exchange understandings brokered with Turkish mediation in 2022, setting out rules for large, coordinated swaps between Russia and Ukraine.
Since then, the two have traded thousands of prisoners, though exchanges have been sporadic and often disrupted by frontline escalation in the war Russia launched against Ukraine in February 2022.
Umerov said that consultations would take place in the near future to decide the procedural and organizational details of the process.
“We are working without pause so that Ukrainians who are to return from captivity can celebrate New Year and Christmas at home – at the family table and with their loved ones,” Umerov said.
Ukraine seeking exchange of 1,200 prisoners with Russia
https://arab.news/b2su5
Ukraine seeking exchange of 1,200 prisoners with Russia
- Ukrainian security chief holds consultations in Turkiye and the UAE, with the support of Kyiv’s partners, on resuming the process of exchanges
South Sudan officers face court martial over civilian massacre
- The increasingly unstable country is seeing a surge of fighting between government and opposition forces
JUBA: South Sudanese soldiers, including two officers, will face a court martial over a civilian massacre last month, the army spokesman said Wednesday.
The increasingly unstable country is seeing a surge of fighting between government and opposition forces, much of it in eastern Jonglei state where at least 280,000 people have been displaced since December according to the UN.
At least 25 civilians, including women and children, were killed in Ayod County in Jonglei state on February 21, according to the opposition.
Army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said that two officers, including a major, and several non-commissioned officers, had been arrested and would face charges in the capital Juba, “before they are arraigned before a competent military court martial.”
He said the deaths were attributed to “some elements” under Gen. Johnson Olony, who was filmed in January ordering troops to “spare no lives” in Jonglei.
Koang said the soldiers had “moved out without the knowledge or authorization of the division commander.”
He also said they had been part of a militia group allied to opposition forces, parts of which had not yet been fully integrated into the army.
Military integration was among the core principles of a peace agreement that ended South Sudan’s five-year civil war in 2018 between President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, but it was never implemented.
Koang said the army regretted the loss of lives, adding: “We would like to once again remind our forces that their mandate is to protect civilians and their property, not to do the opposite.”
It followed an impassioned plea from the Sudan and South Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference on recent civilian killings — in Ayod, and also in Abiemnom County near the Sudan border where at least 169 people were killed on Sunday.
“We implore you to deploy resources to protect vulnerable populations and foster a climate of dialogue and reconciliation instead of violence and revenge, consoling the bereaved and supporting the afflicted,” it said in a statement.
