Lugansk, Nov 2 - DAN. Donetsk People’s Republic authorities are working on the possibility to attract international organizations for the handover of conflict victims remains found in Donbass to relatives living in Ukraine, DPR Head Denis Pushilin told reporters on Tuesday.
“We’ve been raising the issue since 2015,” Pushilin said. “Of course, it is planned to use an international venue, the Minsk venue and invite international organizations.”
“Time will show if Ukraine can meet us halfway,” he said in response to the question if the mechanism of interaction with Kiev in the issue was in the works.
For his part, LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik added that Donbass was ready for dialogue. “We don’t know yet how Ukraine will react to it,” he said.
On Tuesday, Lugansk hosted an international “round table” discussion over the results of the search for missing persons in Donbass. It was attended by the heads of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, chairwoman of the DPR inter-departmental commission on the search for missing persons Darya Morozova, LPR First Deputy Foreign Minister, head of the inter-departmental working group on the search for Ukrainian aggression victims burial sites Anna Soroka and other officials. A photographic exhibition arranged for the event showed the timeline of the search for mass graves in Donbass.
In the summer, the DPR and the LPR set up an inter-departmental commission and a working group to step up the search for missing persons. They include representatives of the Republics’ leadership, law-enforcement bodies and expert community. These bodies were tasked with organizing the search for the missing persons, composing a register of the missing, gathering information on them, creating a database of the missing and deceased and their relatives and coordinating exhumation efforts, identification of bodies and handing them over to relatives.
In the DPR, the first remains were exhumed in Snezhnoye’s Ovsyanoe cemetery on August 19. The Commission then searched for burial sites in Debaltsevo. Experts are reportedly preparing to open a mass grave in Khartsyzsk. *jk