KYIV. Jan 20 (Interfax) - Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova has announced a prompt handover to Ukraine of nine prisoners from the self-proclaimed Donbas republics.
"Three people have now been taken to a detention facility in Luhansk, they are being prepared for a handover. There are six in a Donetsk detention facility. They are now feeding, washing them, giving them medical assistance, making them look neat. Tonight or tomorrow morning they will be handed over by the route Luhansk-Donetsk-Rostov-on-Don-Minsk-Kyiv. That is, we are expecting," Denisova was quoted as saying at a briefing at the checkpoint Zolote by her press service.
Denisova did not give their names, but said all of them are citizens of Ukraine.
The heads of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics earlier said they would hand over to Kyiv some prisoners unilaterally as a gesture of good will.
Leonid Kravchuk, the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG), said the transfer of held Ukrainian citizens to Viktor Medvedchuk, a people's deputy and chairman of the political council of the party Opposition Platform - For Life, without participation by authorized state bodies is a violation of top-level international agreements.
Olexiy Arestovich, an adviser to the head of the presidential office on strategic communications in the sphere of national security and defense and an adviser on information policies of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG, said the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) would check all prisoners whose "return" to Ukraine was announced in some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "The Ukrainian special services will check the people whom marionette 'agencies' are preparing for a 'return,' and the passage and collection of these people at the division line, if it happens, will be organized by authorized state bodies of Ukraine," he said recently on his Facebook page.