Several Nobel Prize winners have appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, EU leaders, and Russian President Vladimir Putin to include a clause requiring the pardoning or exchanging of political prisoners in any prospective deal to end the war in Ukraine, Deutsche Welle reported on Monday, Novaya Gazeta reports.

“Any further agreements beneficial to all parties should directly refer to releasing civilian prisoners,” the statement read, adding that the sick, the elderly, women and adolescents should be the first to be pardoned or exchanged.

These Nobel laureates expressed confidence that if both Putin and Zelenskyy showed goodwill and pardoned non-violent prisoners who had been sentenced to prison terms merely for expressing their personal opinions, it would “accelerate the onset of a lasting and just peace.”

The statement was signed by the former editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, Dmitry Muratov and Filipino American journalist Maria Ressa, who jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, who won the prize for literature in 2015, Russian human rights activist Yan Rachinsky, who accepted the peace prize on behalf of human rights organization Memorial in 2022, and 12 other Nobel laureates.