Qatar, which acts as a liaison between Russia and Ukraine on the issue of the reunification of children taken from the war zone, is negotiating to expand the spheres of its mediation. This was announced by the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the emirate, Majid bin Mohammed Al-Ansari.
“We have been working since day one to find ways to establish dialogue between Russia and Ukraine,” he said on the One Decision podcast. "We also negotiate other types of mediation. “We recently started working on the issue of prisoners of war”, the diplomat added.
He recalled how in the first hours after the beginning of the conflict, the head of government and foreign minister Mohammed bin Abdel Rahman Al Thani asked him to prepare a “balanced statement”.
„We participated from the first day, the prime minister and the foreign minister met with Lavrov and offered mediation to Qatar. And we started talking“, al-Ansari said.
After that, he added, Qatar's mediation was abandoned, but Doha “came back and became part of the grain deal”. Qatar then received a request from Ukraine for assistance in reuniting the children taken from the war zone with their relatives.
"We have started mediation between the two parties. I was personally in Ukraine with the Prime Minister when we started discussing this issue. And we facilitated the reunification of 34 children and individuals with their families, including four Russian children who were reunited with their families in Russia. We are grateful to both sides for their cooperation with us on this issue”, al-Ansari concluded.
Qatar acts as a mediator between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the issue of the return of children taken from the war zone. On November 27, two Russian children returned to their homeland with the assistance of the Qatari embassy in Moscow. On November 28, Russia handed over seven children to the Ukrainian side through the diplomatic mission of the emirate. In total, with the assistance of the Commissioner for Children's Rights under the President of the Russian Federation Maria Lvova-Belova, 15 children from 10 families were reunited with relatives in Russia, and 87 children from 69 families were reunited in Ukraine and third countries.
On October 29, a Qatari foreign ministry spokesman said Doha would make efforts to facilitate the exchange of information on missing persons between Russia and Ukraine, as well as the handover of letters from prisoners of war from both countries. Earlier, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the Russian Federation, Tatiana Moskalkova, said that during a trip to Doha, she exchanged letters from Russian and Ukrainian prisoners with the Ukrainian Ombudsman, Dmitry Lubinets.