{"id":37196,"date":"2019-09-07T17:18:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-07T17:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/09\/07\/russia-and-ukraine-swap-prisoners\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T19:35:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T19:35:55","slug":"russia-and-ukraine-swap-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/09\/07\/russia-and-ukraine-swap-prisoners\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia and Ukraine swap prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MOSCOW \u2014 Russia and Ukraine conducted a major prisoner exchange that freed 35 people detained in each country and flew them to the other, a deal that could help advance Russia-Ukraine relations and end five years of fighting in Ukraine\u2019s east.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The trade involved some of the highest-profile prisoners caught up in a bitter standoff between Ukraine and Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among those Russia returned was Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov<\/a>, whose conviction for preparing terrorist attacks was strongly denounced abroad, and 24 Ukrainian sailors taken with a ship Russian forces seized last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prisoners released by Ukraine included Volodymyr Tsemakh<\/a>, who commanded a separatist rebel air defense unit in the area where a Malaysian airliner was shot down in 2014, killing all 298 people aboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dozens of Ukrainian lawmakers urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy<\/a> against trading Tsemakh, who Dutch investigators probing the aircraft\u2019s downing want to question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although critics saw the Ukraine president’s freeing of Tsemakh as an act of submissiveness to Russia, the exchange “allows Zelenskiy to fulfill one of his main pre-election promises,” Ukrainian analyst Vadim Karasev told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelenskiy, who was elected in a landslide in April, has promised new initiatives to resolve the war in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov hugs his daughter upon his arrival at Boryspil airport, outside Kyiv, on Saturday. (Efrem Lukatsky\/AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The exchange of prisoners also raises hope in Russia for the reduction of European sanctions imposed because of its role in the conflict, Karasev said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelenskiy greeted the freed prisoners as they stepped down from the airplane that had brought them from Moscow to Kyiv’s Boryspil airport. Relatives waiting on the tarmac surged forward to hug their loved ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of the ex-detainees appeared to be in good physical condition, although one struggled down the steps on crutches and another was held by the arms as he slowly navigated the steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Hell has ended; everyone is alive and that is the main thing,” Vyacheslav Zinchenko, 30, one of the released sailors, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and 23 others were seized after Russian ships fired on two Ukrainian vessels on Nov. 25 in the Kerch Strait<\/a>, located between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov next to Russia-annexed Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Russia was not able to break me even though they tried hard to do this,” said Nikolai Karpyuk, who was imprisoned in 2016 after he was convicted of killing Russians in Chechnya in the 1990s.<\/p>\n\n\n\t