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Russia-Ukraine Prisoner Swap: Step Toward Peace or False Dawn?

Jamie Dettmer

   The prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia Saturday has prompted
   hopes that Moscow and Kyiv are ready for serious talks to end a more
   than five-year war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine -- a
   Moscow-fomented conflict that's claimed more than 13,000 lives.

   As the exchange unfolded, which included the release by Russia of 24
   sailors captured in a naval clash last November, U.S. President Donald
   Trump tweeted, "Russia and Ukraine just swapped large numbers of
   prisoners. Very good news, perhaps a first giant step to peace.
   Congratulations to both countries!"

   That view was shared by the man who engineered the swap, Ukraine's
   President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who hailed the exchange as "the first
   step to end the war." And various other Western leaders, including
   Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Emmanuel Macron, joined the chorus
   lauding the exchange of 70 prisoners in all as a positive move.

   For the families of those exchanged, there was relief.

   Russia had threatened to incarcerate the sailors for up to six years,
   saying their patrol boats had trespassed into Russian territory by
   crossing its borders to enter the Sea of Azov, just off Crimea, the
   Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

   Ukraine and other countries that don't recognize Russia's annexation of
   Crimea say the sailors were in international waters, and an
   international maritime court ordered Moscow to free the men, an
   instruction ignored until Saturday.

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