The Head of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, a member of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people, Eskender Bariiev, outlined that he did not rule out a new prisoner exchange in 2020, and the release of political prosoners from Crimea is possible only in a few cases, one of which is the de-occupation of Crimea. He reported this via his Facebook page.
“I do not exclude the possibility that another exchange may take place in 2020, but again within the framework of the Normandy Format there is an issue, whether Ukraine's exchange fund is sufficient to free all prisoners in the Donbas?” – emphasized Bariiev.
The Head of the Board of CTRC believes that the release of political prisoners from Crimea is possible only in a few cases:
1. Interim decision of the UN ICJ in the case of Ukraine vs Russia, in the context of the Convention on Racial Discrimination, despite the fact that in 2019 the court rejected the appeal of the Russian Federation and will consider the case on the merits, unfortunately, I’m not sure that such a decision can be made in 2020;
2. The decision of the ECHR, although according to statistics, at present, most of its decisions are not enforced by Russia;
3. Creating the maximum toxicity for Russia of all 89 political prisoners from Crimea, who are held in the FSB jails, so that the Western world would be ready to strengthen sanctions against Russia due to this fact, of course, this is also a very laborious process;
4. The de-occupation of Crimea, as the primary cause of all problems.