Ukrainian Intelligence: The number of prisoners of war held by Ukraine is much lower than separatists claim
The Advisor to the Head of Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), Yuri Tandit, stated on the 112 Ukraine TV Channel that more than 300 people from the list received from separatists have never been in Ukraine. According to him, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) stated that Ukraine holds 602 prisoners. “We don’t understand where these figures came from,” Tandit said.
Tandit clarified that Ukrainian officials received data on 1102 prisoners in Minsk in 2015. SSU analyzed this information. “I took the unique detailed analysis, which I haven’t shared before. 333 people out of the 1102 haven’t been received by us. Such people have never been in the territory of Ukraine, where laws are in force. 180 people have already been released by the Courts and the majority didn’t want to return on any pretext,” Tandit stated.
20 more people from this list were not under investigation and more than 100 couldn’t be identified. Meanwhile, 42 people who committed crimes had nothing to do with the line of contact and the war in the Donbas, Tandit noted. “It is just another PR-campaign. They throw dust in our eyes and deliberately say that they want us to give them all prisoners. We don’t grab people from the streets; we operate within the law.”
Before this, the representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian subgroup of the Trilateral Contact Group to resolve the situation in the Donbas, Iryna Herashchenko, disproved the data of separatists on the number of prisoners. According to her, the list of 600 people is outrageous. “We don’t know who and where those people are.” As previously reported, 109 Ukrainians are still in captivity in Donbas.