Qatar ready to help return civilian hostages from Russia - Lubinets

Qatar is ready to join as a mediator in the process of returning Ukrainian civilian hostages who have been deported to Russia or stay in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.

Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets said this on Ukrainian television, according to an Ukrinform correspondent.

"Qatar is ready to participate in the return of not only Ukrainian children, but also civilian hostages. I can already say that. We had multiple communications. The only thing is that we did not manage to return the children at the pace at which we would like to return them. There are many more children. But we are working. We have a lot of separate stories in the works now," the ombudsman said.

At the same time, he said that individuals who stay in Russia or in the occupied territories and want to return to Ukraine, or their relatives, should submit a corresponding appeal to the Office of the Ombudsman, because only this gives legal grounds to deal with the physical return of people.

Lubinets said earlier that mediators - Qatar and UNICEF – had been involved in the process of returning Ukrainian Bohdan Yermokhin, who was illegally taken from temporarily occupied Mariupol to Russia.

Yermokhin returned to Ukraine on November 19.