On the day of another prisoner of war exchange, June 5, 2026, Dmytro Lubinets, the authorized representative of the Verkhovna Rada on human rights, held his first working meeting with Russia's new ombudsman Yana Lantratova. As Lubinets reported on social media, the negotiations lasted more than three hours.
What was agreed upon — and what was not signed
Following the meeting, the parties declaratively agreed on six areas of cooperation: verification and return of prisoners of war and illegally detained civilians; delivery of letters and parcels from detainees to their families; mutual visits and inspections of detention conditions; family reunification; establishing the fate of those missing in action. Separately, they agreed to conduct a reconciliation of all available lists of persons in places of detention.
No public documents with timelines or monitoring mechanisms were published. The agreements exist in the format of oral statements by the ombudsman — without signatures, without a third party as guarantor. Previous meetings with Moskalchenko were held with the participation of the ICRC; whether this format will be preserved with Lantratova was not clarified by Lubinets.
The concrete result of the day is different: according to Interfax-Ukraine, five Ukrainian citizens returned to government-controlled territory from temporarily occupied areas, and three families were reunited.
Who is Lantratova
Yana Lantratova, 37, replaced Tatyana Moskalchenko after ten years in the position — the State Duma appointed her on May 14, 2026 with votes from 301 deputies. Prior to this, she was a deputy from the "Fair Russia — For Truth" faction and chaired the committee for civil society development.
"Lantratova fully supports the official line of the Russian authorities. Her appointment is considered a transition of the ombudsman institution to an even less public and more controlled format."
Glavkom, citing analysts
She began her career in the "Youth Guard of United Russia," then served on the presidential human rights council and in structures of the Russian Presidential Administration. In 2024, she appeared on "Solovyov Live," talking about trips to regions from which the most contract soldiers departed for the front.
Critical context: the SBU reported suspicions against Lantratova as early as 2024 of involvement in the forced deportation of children from occupied Kherson. After the city's deoccupation, investigators found documents bearing her signature in a children's home. The International Criminal Court qualifies the deportation of Ukrainian children as a war crime.
The paradox of the humanitarian track
Lubinets had previously contacted Moskalchenko — despite the fact that she was under sanctions by several countries. The logic was pragmatic: a communication channel is more important than the reputation of the interlocutor if it produces results in the form of living people. The same logic now applies to Lantratova — a person to whom Ukrainian prosecutors have brought suspicions of war crimes.
This is not a moral condemnation of negotiations: in the absence of diplomatic relations, the humanitarian track remains the only official channel between the two states regarding the fates of specific people. But it is also not a reason to ignore who the interlocutor is outside the negotiating room.
"A clean slate," as Lubinets calls it, is not actually blank: it inherits both the achievements of previous meetings and all legal suspicions regarding the new partner.
Verification of prisoner lists — the most important of the stated agreements, because it is the discrepancy in lists that blocks exchanges. If no joint reconciliation is publicly confirmed within two to three months — the "clean slate" will turn out to be yet another declaration without consequences.
