24 January session of the parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation of the Verkhovna Rada will raise the issue of releasing Ukrainian hostages. About it the representative of Ukraine in the humanitarian sub-group of the Trilateral contact group, first Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Iryna Herashchenko wrote in Facebook.
“About journalists Roman Sushchenko and Nicholas Simon, a Director Oleg Sentsov – the captives of the Kremlin, the Ukrainian delegation will speak at the PACE January 24, during consideration of the question of freedom of speech in Europe and attacks on journalists (by the way, the author of the report – our colleague Volodymyr Ariev). And, of course, we will raise the issue of hostages in occupied territories of our military and civilians, and prisoners of the Kremlin, including the Crimean Tatars, during a free debate and discussion of the monitoring report on the situation in Ukraine. Fighting for the release of hostages in all international venues,” she wrote.
Gerashchenko also said that the Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia has received letters of support from the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. “Relatives of political prisoners who are in Russia, inform that they have received letters of support from President Poroshenko. That for them these words are very important – the government is fighting for its own, the President had a dialogue with the families, including through their authorized persons,” she wrote.
According to her, the President in all international meetings begs the question of the liberation of the Ukrainian prisoners. “Not everyone can talk, not about all the steps and efforts to talk publicly (not yet achieved), but there is no such international meeting, where the President did not raise the issue of the hostages and those in Russia and those in the occupied territories. And at the Davos meetings also raised the issue of the release of the hostages as a priority and during dialogue of the President with the newly elected UN Secretary General and the President of the ICRC, and with other world leaders,” – said Gerashchenko.
According to her, last year thanks to the efforts of the President, the diplomats of the Minsk group managed to release three of the captives of the Kremlin and about 20 hostages from the occupied territories.
We will remind, according to the SBU, today insurgents in the temporarily occupied territories are being held 112 of the Ukrainians. According to the foreign Ministry on the territory of the RF illegally detained at least 17 citizens of Ukraine. More Ukrainians arbitrarily detained and arrested in the temporarily occupied Crimea.
