Here we go again.

Here we go again.

Russia’s new Commissioner for Human Rights, Yana Lantratova, continues to publish the same lies as her predecessor. In short, Lantratova writes that Russia is supposedly ready for a prisoner-of-war exchange, has handed over three lists, has somehow agreed on yet another list with itself, and everything would be fine, except that “bad Ukraine does not want to take its people back.” And so it goes, over and over again.

What is really happening? Russia is illegally holding several thousand Ukrainians. Some of them are ordinary civilians abducted by Russian troops, such as Oleg Kotov. Others are servicemen of the Ukrainian Defense Forces, whom the Russian authorities convict under criminal articles. The abduction of civilians and the trial of prisoners of war for participating in combat operations are war crimes and a gross violation of the Geneva Conventions. Russia is doing this in order to use these people as an instrument of pressure and destabilization of Ukrainian society. The relatives of Ukrainians are threatened that they will never see their loved ones again, because they have been convicted in Russia and supposedly are not subject to exchange.

With the help of this manipulation, the Russian side constantly tries to derail exchanges by arranging bargaining over people. Ukraine has long formulated its position regarding the order in which prisoners should be returned: first and foremost, severely wounded and seriously ill prisoners of war, women, as well as those whom Russia has been holding the longest, must be returned. This is a simple, clear, and humanitarian principle.

However, such an order does not suit the Russian side, which believes it has the right to dispose of Ukrainians’ fates, deciding whom they want to exchange and whom to keep torturing further.

Thousands of Russian servicemen and foreign mercenaries are being held in Ukrainian captivity. There are no restrictions on their exchange from Ukraine’s side. Yana Lantratova, you write that you are “ready for all sorts of exchange options”? Then how about stopping the publication of long excuses and actually resolving the issue of prisoners of war in full? Not exchanging 100 to 200 people at a time, but returning home everyone being held on both sides under the formula “all for all.”

For the fifth year of the war, people have been in captivity. Why does Russia need this? Why hold and torture Ukrainians instead of bringing its own citizens home?

If the Russian authorities are truly interested in the fate of their servicemen, they do not need new lists, statements, and public complaints. All that is required is a single political decision: stop using people as bargaining chips and carry out a humanitarian exchange of “all for all.” All other talk of “readiness for exchanges” remains nothing more than propaganda that does not bring a single prisoner any closer to returning home.

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