12 Jan 2023; MEMO: Ukrainian and Russian human rights envoys met in Turkiye for the first time and asked for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's mediation to set up a humanitarian corridor between their countries, Al-Quds Al-Arabi reported yesterday.
Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament commissioner for human rights, and Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia's commissioner for human rights, met as part of an international conference on the future of human rights in the 21st century.
Both of them requested their host, Turkish chief ombudsman, Seref Malkoc, ask President Erdogan to mediate to set up a humanitarian corridor for trapped women, children and wounded people. This would be similar to the corridor created to export grain which was organised by Turkiye.
Erdogan expressed his readiness to take up this mission.
The two sides agreed to exchange more than 40 prisoners of war.
"We talked about many humanitarian issues, such as family reunification, return of children, exchange of identity information of people in Ukraine or Russia," Lubinets told reporters after the meeting.
"We have focused especially on the issue of civilian Ukrainian citizens serving prison sentences in the Russian Federation since 2014. The number of Ukrainian citizens who can be included in this category is quite large," he said.
Lubinets thanked Erdogan and the Turkish people for their support for Ukraine's territorial integrity. He also hailed Malkoc's participation in the bilateral meeting.
