MOSCOW. Aug 27 (Interfax) - Moscow and Kyiv will resume preparations for a prisoner exchange on August 27, and the swap itself is expected to be completed before the end of this week, the newspaper Izvestia said on Tuesday, citing Valentin Rybin, a lawyer for Russian citizens held in Ukrainian prisons.
"I expect such a swap to take place this week. But I can't give you an exact date. The thing is that the Ukrainians are having several days off from August 24. Active work will restart from Tuesday. Progress will be made then. One way or the other, all this is expected to happen in the near future," the lawyer, who represents Russian citizens Maxim Odintsov, Alexander Baranov, and Yevgeny Mefyodov, told the newspaper.
The sides are additionally working to drop all charges against those due to be exchanged, Izvestia said. According to Rybin, those who are ultimately to be sent home should not again encounter problems with the law because of their former charges.
"We're working to clear those to be exchanged of all charges. This has to happen. The procedure of preparing people for the exchange will resume on Tuesday," the lawyer said.
However, it is still unclear how many people both sides are going to exchange. A source close to the process told the newspaper that "a 33/33 formula that has surfaced in the media is tentative, because there is still a lack of clarity regarding certain people."
Rybin, in turn, told the newspaper that the announced figures cannot be seen as conclusive.
"It's a potential formula. The composition is being discussed on a day-to-day basis. There may be more or there may be fewer people," he said.
The secretariat of the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada's human rights commissioner Liudmyla Denisova has not responded to the newspaper's phone calls or request for comment.
The office of Russian human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova told Izvestia that it would not comment on this matter until all issues concerning the return of prisoners were clarified.
The defense team for RIA Novosti Ukraine Chief Editor Kirill Vyshinsky, in turn, told the newspaper that the journalist still has no plans to take part in any exchange because he is determined to defend his innocence in court. However, no date has been set for a court hearing into an appeal to change Vyshinsky's restraining measure as of yet, Izvestia said.
There is also no concrete information on the future of the 22 Ukrainian sailors and two officers of the Ukrainian Security Service who were detained following the incident in the Kerch Strait in late November 2018. Their lawyer Nikolai Polozov declined the newspaper's request for comment, saying only that "some processes are ongoing, but we can't yet comment on them."
No final decision on whether they will take part in the upcoming swap has been made so far, he told Izvestia.