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Prisoner exchange locked in stalemate in eastern Ukraine: mediator

Xinhua, April 6, 2015 Adjust font size:

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who is mediating the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine, said Monday that the conflicting sides have suspended the swap of their prisoners of war.

"Prisoner swaps actually have been halted," Kuchma, a representative of the contact group on normalizing the situation in Ukraine's eastern regions, told reporters.

Kuchma explained that the pro-independence rebels have set legal guarantee for granted amnesty for their fighters as a precondition for a new round of prisoner exchange, while Kiev is very hesitant.

"In fact, there is not a single governmental team to deal with this issue," Kuchma said.

The prisoner swap is part of the Minsk Peace Agreement reached in February in an attempt to end the one-year-old bloody conflict which has killed over 6,000 people.

The deal has helped to significantly ease the fighting in eastern regions, but sporadic clashes between the conflicting sides still occur.

According to Ukrainian military spokesman Andriy Lysenko, six government servicemen were killed and two were wounded in eastern regions on Sunday, marking the heaviest casualties of the Ukrainian army in more than a week. Endi