The Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, virtually “the last acceptable mediator between Moscow and Kyiv,” played a key role in organizing the exchange of prisoners between the Russian-controlled Donbas and the Ukrainian...
Russia had effectively blocked the prisoner exchange process in the Donbas for 15 months from September 2016, when two Ukrainian nationals were released from captivity. This September Ukraine was ready to release 309 prisoners in...
The prisoner swap process had been de-facto blocked by Russia for 15 months. The last exchange took place on 17 September 2016, when Ukrainian nationals Volodymyr Zhemchuhov and UN mission employee Yurii Suprun were released from...
The recent release of convicted Crimean Tatar leaders Ilmi Umerov and Akhmet Chiygoz marks the first release of political prisoners this year. The official number of hostages freed from the Donbas this year also accounts to two civilians,...
Ukraine’s Security Services (SBU) revealed one of numerous schemes by which the so-called republic’s leaders receive money from Ukraine, part of which is used to finance armed forces of the “republic” which is waging war...
“One Ukrainian woman is worth two Russian men,” many commentators noted as they witnessed an obviously unsymmetrical comeback scene of Savchenko to Ukraine and Russian military intelligence officers Aleksandrov and Yerofeyev to Russia....
The difference in the welcomes given the released prisoners in Kyiv and Moscow says more about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict than dozens of words. Nadiya Savchenko was greeted as a heroine in Ukraine’s capital. The entire world has...
After 707 days of imprisonment, the kidnapped and unlawfully convicted on fabricated charges Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko was exchanged for two Russian prisoners of war, GRU military intelligence officers Aleksandr Aleksandrov and...
On 3 February, the court in Donetsk, Russia decided to allow Savchenko case investigator Dmitriy Manshin to testify. Ukraine’s parliament has put Manshin on the so-called “Savchenko list,” a list of persons involved in...
On 11 October, a three-day meeting of the Synod, or church council, of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, finished in Istanbul. It gave further confirmation that Ukraine is on the path to receiving church independence from Moscow – and healing...
