International coalition on return of civilian hostages should be created, - Lubinets
According to Censor.NET, citing Interfax-Ukraine, Lubinets said this at the conference "Ukraine. Year 2024" conference on Sunday.
"We are looking for countries that are officially ready to join the process of returning civilian hostages," Lubinets said.
He informed that during his last trip to Qatar a week ago, the Prime Minister of this country expressed Qatar's readiness to "try to return Ukrainian civilian hostages".
"We need to create an international coalition on the return of civilian hostages, similar to the one we created for the return of Ukrainian children," Lubinets said.
The Ombudsman noted that about 28,000 Ukrainian citizens are being held in Russian torture chambers: journalists, local government officials, church representatives, and international representatives.
"Three official representatives of the OSCE organisation were detained, two in the Donetsk region and one in the Luhansk region. We have not been able to release them for several years. And all this time, the Russian Federation has been an OSCE member. Isn't this an indicator that we have a crisis in international organisations?" - Lubinets said.
He emphasised that Ukraine cannot "exchange civilians for civilians", as this is prohibited by international humanitarian law.
According to the Ombudsman, Ukraine is looking for new approaches to free and return civilian hostages, but it cannot do it alone.
