More than 650 people have been released in the biggest prisoner exchange to date in the Ukrainian conflict, separatist authorities have announced.
Ukrainian officials
signed the deal with
the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk on Thursday, the
Lenta news site reported.
Ukraine
released 47 prisoners, while the two breakaway
republics released a total of 618 people, said
Olga Kobtseva, spokesperson for Luhansk
Contact Group for Humanitarian Affairs in Minsk, Belarus.
The two sides have made
15 prisoner exchanges since February 2015, releasing 328 detainees in
total, Kobtseva said.
The
Ukrainain conflict has been ongoing since February 2014, killing an
estimated 9,000 people.