With this central message, the First Deputy Chairperson of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Iryna Herashchenko appealed to NATO and the EU representatives during the discussion on May 31 within the framework of the roundtable on the theme “New Formats for NATO-EU Cooperation with Ukraine", organized by the parliamentary Committee of Foreign Affairs, the Centre for Global Studies “Strategy XXI” with the support of the NATO Information and Documentation Centre in Ukraine.
Iryna Herashchenko remarked that owing to the escalation of the situation in eastern Ukraine and the use by the other side of the arms banned by the Minsk Agreement, the number of civilian casualties had there increased much during the last weeks.
The politician drew everybody’s attention to the fact that on May 30 the OSCE SMM’s representatives had come under fire from the side of the pro-Russian militants nearby the Petrivske settlement.
Unfortunately, this is not the first case of obstructing the Mission’s work. According to I. Herashchenko, the Russian Federation and the Russia-controlled militants have been blocking the work of not only the OSCE, but also other international missions, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, in particular, who has for four years been deprived of access to illegally detained Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, the whole Crimea and the Russian Federation.
Iryna Herashchenko said that the Ukrainian prisoners were disentitled to a phone call, meeting with their relatives, medical care; they were subjected to tortures, physical and psychological violence.
Iryna Herashchenko thanked human rights organizations, representatives of the overseas Ukrainian diasporas for their rallies in support of the release of political prisoners and hostages, but then noted that there was still no reaction to the hunger strikes of Ukrainians by international institutions, parliaments and governments of the Western European countries.
The representative of the TCG’s humanitarian subgroup remarked that the release process had in point of fact been blocked since January 2018. It was also notified that the Ukraine-offered swap of twenty-three Russian criminals convicted of committing crimes in Ukraine for the Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia and the Crimea has not been of any effect yet.
I.Heraschenko expressed her high hopes that in the run-up to the 2018 World Cup to be held in Russia, international partners of Ukraine would exert much more pressure on the Russian Federation to demand the release of the illegally detained Ukrainians.