Russian POWs sentenced for particularly grave crimes not subject to swap - prosecutors

Captured Russian servicemen who have committed particularly grave crimes must serve their sentences in Ukraine and cannot be exchanged.

This was stated by the chief of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict at the Prosecutor General's Office, Yurii Belousov, who spoke in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine, reports Ukrinform.

"Here’s our position: if someone has committed particularly grave crimes, then they shall serve their sentence in Ukraine and are not subject to exchange. These are our conditional ‘red lines’ because, if we just swap everyone, what will stop them from committing war crimes? If we are talking about murders, sexual violence, torture, these sentences shall be served in Ukraine," Belousov said.

Answering the question of how many convicted Russians have already been exchanged, he noted that their count is under 10, not dozens.

According to him, no standards regulate where to hold Russian soldiers once the verdict has been handed down. "There are no clear instructions. Therefore, everything depends on the situation: there are those who are held in the POW camp as this is also a place of deprivation of liberty," said the head of the “War Department.”

He said that every prisoner of war goes through a special system, which can be referred to as screening.

"If we see that there are possible signs of them having been involved in war crimes, we begin to dig deeper and find this out. Not on everyone do we find something. If this is a soldier who deployed in our territory but never robbed civilians, tortured or killed anyone, then they are held as a prisoner of war," Belousov explained.

If law enforcers establish that a Russian POW may be complicit in a war crime, they are still held together with prisoners of war.

"It is clear that if we put them in a pre-trial detention facility, their life will be short there," said the prosecutor.

Belousov also noted that Ukraine holds no Russian civilians as POWs.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the Ombudsman’s Office received almost 11,000 appeals from relatives looking for their loved ones, civilians who have gone missing amid hostilities.