Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko is looking forward to a successful transfer of 12 Ukrainians to Ukraine by the Russian side, who had been serving their sentences at prisons in the territory of Crimea and were illegally taken to the Russian Federation.

"I hope that Russia will fulfill the preliminary agreements and hand over the first part of Ukrainian citizens who are imprisoned in jails in the occupied Crimea. We are talking about 12, perhaps, 16 people," the minister told journalists in Kyiv on Thursday.

At the same time, he stressed that this can be called a victory only after Ukrainians cross the border into Ukraine.