Kiev completes prisoner swap with rebels

The Ukrainian government completed a prisoner swap with rebels in the country's eastern regions and received 76 detainees on Sunday, the presidential office said.

"The mutual release of the detainees has ended," the presidential office said in a statement on Facebook, adding that it will provide more details later. The prisoner swap took place near the city of Horlivka in the Donetsk region.

Interfax Ukraine news agency said in an earlier report that Kiev would hand over about 120 captives to the rebels in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.

This is the first prisoner exchange between the two sides since 2017 when Kiev and the rebels released a total of 312 detainees.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and German Chancellor Angela Merkel hailed Sunday's prisoner swap during a phone conversation, according to the Kremlin.

Leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met at the "Normandy Four" summit in Paris on Dec. 9, reaching an agreement on a prisoner swap in Ukraine by the end of this year.

The conflict between the Ukrainian government and pro-independence armed groups in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions broke out in April 2014. According to the United Nations, some 13,000 people have been killed in the conflict since then.