12:18 15.11.2022

Zelensky calls for all-for-all prisoner exchange

2 min read
Zelensky calls for all-for-all prisoner exchange

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called for an all-for-all prisoner exchange with Russia, as well as for the release of all adults and children deported to Russia.

"Thousands of our people - military and civilians - are in the Russian captivity. They are subjected to brutal torture - this is mass abuse! In addition, we know by name 11,000 children who were forcibly deported to Russia. They are separated from their parents in full knowledge that they have families. Apart from the children, whose data we know, there are tens of thousands of those who were forcibly deported and about whom we know only indirectly." he said, speaking via video link at the G-20 summit on Tuesday.

"Add to that hundreds of thousands of deported adults, and you will see what a humanitarian catastrophe the Russian war has caused. Add political prisoners - Ukrainian citizens who are held in Russia and in the temporarily occupied territory, in particular in Crimea," he said.

Zelensky said "we did not find support from the International Committee of the Red Cross. We do not see that they are fully fighting to gain access to the camps, where Ukrainian prisoners of war and political prisoners are held. Neither they are helping to find deported Ukrainians. This self-withdrawal is the self-destruction of the Red Cross as an organization that was once respected."

"Therefore, we must unite for the sake of the only realistic model of the release of prisoners – 'all for all," he said.

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