HORLIVKA, Ukraine — Ukrainian authorities and Russian-backed separatist rebels conducted a prisoner exchange Wednesday, the largest such trade of captives since the start of the conflict and a sign of visible progress in the implementation of a 2015 peace deal.
Separatists from the self-proclaimed separatist republics in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions handed over 74 prisoners, and Ukrainian authorities delivered 233.
Larisa Sargan, a spokesman for the country’s prosecutor general’s office, said on Face-book that one of the 74 prisoners released by the separatists said she would stay in Donetsk.
The prisoners, some of whom had been held for more than a year, were exchanged in the town of Horlivka and the village of Zaitseve with their belongings. One held a cat.
“I’m out of hell, I have survived,” said Yevhen Chudentsov, who served with one of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions in the east and was taken prisoner by the rebels in February 2015.
Chudentsov said he faced threats and beatings in custody, and his front teeth were knocked out. He was initially sentenced to capital punishment, which was later changed to 30 years in prison. He said after his release in Horlivka that he would join the Ukrainian military again.
The exchange was supervised by observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a trans-Atlantic security and rights group that has deployed monitors to eastern Ukraine.
The organization welcomed the swap and urged the two sides to build on the momentum from it.
Ukraine was supposed to release 306 people, but dozens chose to stay in Ukraine or had been freed earlier, said Viktor Medvedchuk, who monitored the exchange on the Ukrainian side.
Many of the captives are not combatants; some were activists and bloggers who were charged with spying or treason.