MOSCOW — Russia and Ukraine began a long-anticipated swap of dozens of prisoners on Saturday, with government planes taking off from both countries’ capitals around the same time, as the two nations moved to defuse tensions.
A plane carrying 24 Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia in the Kerch Strait last year took off from Vnukovo Airport near Moscow, Ukraine’s presidency said in a statement, and Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer working on their case in Russia, told the Ukrainian television channel 112.
A similar plane departed from Borispol Airport near Kiev, taking off around noon local time.
Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Russia on terrorism charges, was also included the prisoner exchange, his lawyer Mark Feigin said on Twitter. Ten other prominent Ukrainians held by Russia were expected to be part of the swap, he added.
The Russian Embassy in Kiev posted a picture on Twitter of the released Russians, writing, “Our people have been released! They are flying home.”
The swap of prisoners, believed to be dozens on both sides, is the first significant step toward resolving a conflict between Russia and Ukraine in years. Ukraine’s president at the time of the sailors’ detention, Petro O. Poroshenko, put his nation on a war footing with Russia as tensions over the shared Kerch waterway escalated into a crisis that dragged in NATO and the United Nations.
In July this year, Ukraine seized a Russian tanker that it said was used during a naval confrontation in 2018 to block passage through the Kerch Strait, a disputed waterway linked to the Black Sea.
The governments in Kiev and Moscow have been locked in diplomatic clashes since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and armed Russia-backed separatists have waged a deadly struggle in Ukraine’s east.
More than 13,000 people have been killed during the conflict, a quarter of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
Source : Nytimes
