Under the Geneva Convention, Russia is obliged to return all severely wounded Ukrainian POWs to Ukraine

Russia is constantly sabotaging the exchange of POWs by violating the Geneva Convention, which requires treating them humanely. This fundamental principle is simply not respected by Russia.

Today, the Russian Federation is illegally holding hostage Ukrainian civilians, including children, women and the elderly, who have been detained by Russian special services in the occupied territories, as well as seriously wounded and seriously ill Ukrainian servicemen.

All these categories of citizens should be returned to Ukraine without any conditions under international humanitarian law. Despite this, Russia not only continues to hold civilian and seriously wounded servicemen hostage, but also refuses to allow representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross access to their places of detention. Furthermore, the Russians do not provide Ukrainian POWs with proper conditions, necessary medications, and do not allow them to communicate with their relatives, which makes it difficult to obtain any information about their condition. Thus, Russia deliberately creates inhumane conditions of captivity.

For its part, Ukraine on 24 March unilaterally extradited to Russia all seriously wounded and seriously ill Russian POWs without any conditions, thus fully adhering to its international obligations in implementing articles 109-114 of the Geneva Convention.

Russia must now reciprocate by releasing all severely wounded Ukrainian POWs. Earlier, Ukraine had offered the Russian Federation to accept their mutual return to their countries, but Moscow refused. In spite of this, Kyiv has shown a gesture of goodwill and handed over severely wounded Russian soldiers to Russia.

The international community should support Ukraine and demand that Russia immediately return all Ukrainian civilians and severely wounded Ukrainian POWs to Ukraine.