Ukraine pardons, hands over 15 persons from list to ORDLO in goodwill gesture

"Ukraine is handing over 15 people from the list of 228 people," Gerashchenko said at a briefing in Kyiv on Thursday. Among these, 15 people are seriously ill people and old people and six of them are women, she said. "These people will be pardoned by a presidential decree or there are other procedural possibilities to hand them over to ensure that the hostage release process is unblocked," Gerashchenko said. She also said Ukraine is ready to release 228 people from the list provided by some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which contains some 1,000 people. "Some 200 of some 1,000 people on this list are impossible to determine. Some names are repeated, there are over 100 people who committed grave crimes, specifically, killings and mass killings, and they are not eligible for amnesty. There are dozens of people there who are unrelated to the Minsk process: thieves and pickpockets, militants' friends. There are also dozens of people who walked free under the 'Savchenko law'... We said we are ready to hand over 228 people," Gerashchenko said. Gerashchenko said, citing the most recent information obtained by the OSCE as of August 2016, that 58 Ukrainians are still held hostage on the territory of some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, including 52 people in the Donetsk region and six in the Luhansk region. Yuriy Kochanov, the head of the SBU center on prisoners' release, said Ukraine is ready to hand over a list of 228 people, with the exception of 15, to the relevant pardons commission and to later hand these people over to some areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "The list is formed not only on the basis of indications of procedural status, but with regard for the person invited by that side: whether or not this person wants to be handed over to the uncontrolled territory. Many people from this list refuse such actions," he said.