Poroshenko confirms release of 139 Ukrainian soldiers

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has confirmed release of 139 Ukrainian soldiers in a prisoner swap with separatists in East Ukraine.
Poroshenko in a statemnet broadacast by the Russian Interfax News Agency, late on Friday, said the prisoners' release took place in the remote Zholobok town.
Sources for the separatists, earlier, asserted that under the recently-crafted Minsk agreement, they released 140 soldiers, in exchange for 103 citizens of east Ukraine.
The conciliation Minsk deal, signed on February 12 by the Contact Group on Ukraine, envisages withdrawal of Ukrainian Army units from confrontational lines -- along with pullback of military formations of the Donetsk Peoples Republic (DPR) and Lugansk Peoples Republic (LPR) from the frontlines.
The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine is a group of representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe that had been formed to seek peaceful conciliation to the crisis in Ukraine.
A spokesman of the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraing told Russian Television that sporadic armed clashes stopped at all the demarcation lines with the Ukrainian government troops.