Office: Donetsk and Lugansk

office: The mutual release of the detainees has ended, the Ukrainian presidential office said in a statement on Facebook, specifying that Kyiv received 76 captives, according to The Guardian. Separatist officials said the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk received 124. The exchange provoked outrage in government-held Ukraine after Kyiv handed over to separatists five riot police suspected of killing protesters during a pro-western uprising in 2014 as part of the swap. Stanyslav Aseyev and Oleg Galazyuk, journalists who contributed to the Ukrainian service of the US-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, were also freed by rebels. The exchange came after Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, held their first face-to-face talks in Paris on 9 December and agreed measures to de-escalate Europe's only active war. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, hailed the swap as positive in a joint statement. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.