Ukraine has a sufficient exchange fund to exchange prisoners, but Russia has a low interest in some groups of prisoners of war who fought against Ukraine and is unwilling to exchange them.
Andriy Yusov, the representative of the State Department of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, reported on this on the air of the national telethon.
"We can state: the Russian Federation has a low interest in certain groups of its own representatives and Russian prisoners of war. If we are talking about mobilized and military personnel from the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk oblast and Donetsk oblast, then there is the lowest interest in them. We can see this at different levels of attitude: from the fact that they are the worst trained, they are literally forcibly mobilized, the worst dressed and with the worst weapons, to the issue of exchange," explained Andriy Yusov, commenting on the information that the occupying country, which “divides his prisoners of war into classes”.
Despite this, the negotiation process on the exchange issue continues.
"For some reason, Russia believes that it can sometimes still dictate terms, but this is not the case. Work on the return of Ukrainian defenders continues, and we are waiting for news. The exchange fund and other instruments for the return of Ukrainian defenders to Ukraine are sufficient. In addition, it is constantly updated," the intelligence representative added.
According to him, the exchange fund is a very complex, multi-level and non-linear thing, because it is not only about the number of prisoners.
"We will not discuss the specifics, but believe me that both the coordination headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war and the relevant working groups are doing everything possible and using all tools to return our defenders," noted Andriy Yusov.