Ombudsman Lubinets: Hungary and Russia are preparing an information campaign about Ukraineʼs “reluctance” to exchange prisoners

Hungary and Russia are preparing an operation to discredit Ukraine in order to accuse them of unwillingness to exchange prisoners of war. Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets stated this during a telethon on June 22.

"In my opinion, this is Hungaryʼs playing along with Russian propaganda. Now, according to my information, they are planning to launch a psychological operation to discredit the authorities of Ukraine, that the Russian Federation is allegedly ready to hand over Ukrainian prisoners of war, but the problem in Ukraine is that there is no initiative. But I can confirm that new initiatives regarding new exchanges are constantly taking place on the part of Ukraine, that we want to conduct an exchange of all for all," Dmytro Lubinets noted.

Ukrainian diplomats are now trying to establish contact with eight military personnel, but Hungary does not allow diplomats to visit them, and has also limited their circle of communication and taken away the mobile phones they gave to contact relatives. Lubinets noted that some soldiers were visited by relatives.

Lubinets emphasized that Hungary violated international law, because it is impossible to simply take and take away prisoners of war from the territory of the Russian Federation. Even if there were humanitarian motives for this, they should have informed Ukraine and the International Committee of the Red Cross about it first of all.

• On June 8, the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) informed that it had handed over to Hungary Ukrainian prisoners of war originally from Transcarpathia, who took part in hostilities.
• The Ukrainian side did not know about it and was not involved in the process in any way. The issue of prisoners of war is handled exclusively by the Coordination Headquarters, with which neither the ROC nor Hungary contacted. Officially, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Hungary Peter Szijártó stated that Budapest was not involved in this, and the transfer of Ukrainian prisoners to the Hungarian side took place as a result of "discussions between the church and religious organizations."
• On June 20, the Embassy of Ukraine in Budapest managed to take three out of 11 Ukrainian prisoners of war from Hungary.