MOSCOW, August 12. /TASS/ Moscow has approved a list of 224 Ukrainian nationals who were previously convicted in Russia of various offenses and is ready to exchange them for Russians held by Kiev, Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova said.

"We have already approved a list of 224 names. They are people from Ukraine who were convicted of crimes committed on our territory. We are ready to hand them over as early as tomorrow morning, just to get our people back," she wrote on the Max social media platform.

Lantratova added that the Russians in question included residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics and Crimea who "have been waiting to be able to return home for years" since 2014 or 2022.

The rights commissioner said that Ukrainian authorities were reluctant to take back their citizens. "They don’t need these 224 people. They care about media hype, not human lives," she stressed.

According to Lantratova, her office cooperates with the Russian Defense Ministry and other relevant agencies, regularly sending Ukraine lists of Russian nationals expected to return home. "However, unfortunately, Kiev often rejects our proposals: they don’t want to take their people back or, most importantly, send ours back," she said.