Ukrainian parliamentarian Iryna Heraschenko (Petro Poroshenko Bloc), who represents Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group, has said that around 1,000 convicts serving their sentences at prisons in the Donbas areas controlled by the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, have expressed a wish to serve the remainder of their sentences at prisons in the central government-controlled territory.

"Together with senior officials at the Ukrainian State Penitentiary Service and the human rights ombudsman Lutkovska, we discussed the problem of transferring the convicts, who are serving their sentences at prisons in the occupied territories and would like to serve the remainder of their sentences at other penitentiaries in Ukraine. We are raising this issue with the humanitarian subgroup in Minsk and are planning to resolve the matter as quickly as possible, especially in the case of adolescents, women, sick convicts (but the key factor is a convict's wish to serve the remainder of his or her sentence in the penitentiary system on Ukraine-controlled territory)," Heraschenko wrote on her "Facebook" page on Monday.

Currently, around 1,000 people are said to have expressed such a wish, she said.

"It is very important to get the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) involved in this effort. So that it could, as an independent organization, obtain a personal confirmation and verify the lists of convicts for the transfer. There is no consent from militants yet. But we are working to get the lists agreed upon and people transferred," Heraschenko said.

"Twenty prisons remain in the occupied area: 15 in Luhansk Region and 14 in Donetsk Region. In November 2014, there were some 16,000 inmates there. Now, according to the unconfirmed reports, (the figure is) 10,000. Some were released, many died or got killed or joined militant squads...," Heraschenko said.

Over the year since the conflict began in Donbas, the Ukrainian Penitentiary Service managed to move over 300 convicts, including 178 women, from a Luhansk prison.

"Our information is that the humanitarian situation is complicated at prisons in the occupied territories, especially at those where inmates have severe diagnoses such as tuberculosis and so on. Medications are in short supply, and international humanitarian organizations are being denied access," Heraschenko said.