Ukraine hopes to free 47 detainees from rebel captivity soon: official

Kiev hopes to secure the release of at least 47 Ukrainian citizens held captive by independence-seeking insurgents in the near future, a senior security official said here Tuesday.

"We hope that at the current stage 47 hostages, who are illegally held in Donetsk and Lugansk, would be freed," Yury Tandyt, the aid to the head of the Ukrainian Security Service, told a media briefing.

Kiev believes that insurgents are holding at least 109 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians captured in the conflict, Tandyt said, adding that the rebels have confirmed the detention of only 47 people.

The next meeting of the humanitarian subgroup of the Contact Group on the Ukraine crisis, which considers the issues of the prisoner exchange, is slated for Oct. 26, Tandyt said.

Last month, insurgents, who estimate that Kiev is holding 618 of their supporters, said they have proposed an "all-for-all" prisoner exchange to the Ukrainian government to be discussed during the humanitarian subgroup meeting.

The prisoner swap is a key part of the Minsk ceasefire agreement designed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 9,600 people since April 2014. Endi