On December 29, Ukraine and the Russian-backed “authorities” in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics” carried out a prisoner exchange whereby 76 Ukrainian captives – 12 military personnel and 64 civilians – were swapped for 127 people who were released to Russia’s proxies. It certainly was not the “all for all” prisoner exchange foreseen by the Normandy format talks of December 9, 2019, nor was it an even swap. Moreover, no Crimean Tatars were among those released, nor were the political prisoners held in Russia. Nonetheless, there was real joy in Ukraine upon the return of those held by Russian-backed forces, some of them since 2015.
But there was one aspect of the exchange that is deeply troubling, and controversial. Among the prisoners released by Ukraine were ex-officers of the Berkut implicated in the killings of protesters during the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014 and pro-Russian militants convicted of a terrorist attack in Kharkiv in February 2015. The Kyiv Court of Appeal on December 28 freed from custody five former Berkut officers charged with killing 48 Maidan activists; that same day a Kharkiv court sentenced the three militants responsible for four deaths to life imprisonment, but then promptly released them from custody. It was justice denied.