Ukraine and Russia. Reports on trade in Ukrainian prisoners. The Russians are supposed to sell the prisoners to the Chechens

Some paramilitary formations fighting alongside Russia, especially units affiliated with Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, currently do not have many opportunities to capture Ukrainian prisoners because they are not directly involved in military operations.

Read: “A gift to Moscow.” Western services in joint competitions with units of Chechnya and Belarus

However, these units want to conduct a prisoner exchange with Ukraine to recover Chechen soldiers captured at the front. That is why these units are involved in the prisoner trade and the purchase of Ukrainians from the regular Russian army, ISW reported, citing reports from the British daily newspaper The Times.

The newspaper stressed that the 1949 Geneva Convention relating to the treatment of prisoners of war does not recognize such informal exchanges as a violation of humanitarian law, but such practices are likely to be illegal. The Convention prohibits the adoption of “special agreements that adversely affect the status of prisoners of war.”

Yuri Taraniuk, a representative of the Ukrainian Coordination Body for the Exchange of Prisoners of War, said at the end of January that more than eight thousand Ukrainian citizens remained in Russian captivity, including more than 1,600 civilians.