The mayor of Melitopol was allegedly kidnapped by Russian troops on 11 March.
March 17, 2022 at 1:06 am
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The mayor of an occupied Ukrainian city allegedly abducted by Russian forces last week has been released, Ukrainian officials said Wednesday.
The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was released from captivity during a “special operation,” said Kyrylo Tymoshenko, an adviser to the presidential administration of Ukraine. Tymoshenko did not provide other details.
Melitopol was occupied from the first days of the Russian invasion. Ukrainian officials said Fedorov, who insisted that the city in southeastern Ukraine remain free and supported daily pro-Ukrainian protests, was kidnapped on March 11 after resisting the takeover.
Fedorov disappeared after being allegedly led away with a sack over his head by a large group of heavily armed Russian soldiers on Pobedy Square in Melitopol in a CCTV video that Tymoshenko shared on Telegram. The Russian-controlled separatists then announced that they were bringing charges against Fedorov of “assisting terrorism.”
CCTV footage shows Russian forces detaining Ivan Fedorov, the mayor of Melitopol, a city in southeastern Ukraine that came under Russian control during the invasion, at the Taras Shevchenko Palace of Culture on Pobedy Square in Melitopol, in a frame from a video released March 11th. , 2022.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video on Telegram on Wednesday that reportedly shows him on the phone with Fedorov. The mayor thanked Zelensky and said that he needed a couple of days to recover from the experience, and then he would be ready to carry out any instructions.
Smiling Zelensky said that he was very glad to communicate with Fedorov and that “we do not abandon our people.”
Zelenskiy referred to the call during a nationwide address on Wednesday evening.
“We finally managed to free the mayor of Melitopol from captivity,” he said. “Ivan Fedorov is free. I talked to him today. The Russian military abducted him on March 11, trying to persuade him to cooperate. But our man survived. He did not give up. Like all of us, we endure.”
The president, in several video messages, demanded Fedorov’s release, calling it a “crime against democracy.”
“The actions of the Russian occupiers will be equated with the actions of ISIS terrorists,” he said last week.
After the alleged kidnapping, a pro-Russian administration appears to have been established in Melitopol. A local MP from a pro-Russian party made a televised address on Saturday, in which she said that a “committee of the chosen few” was now taking over the running of the city. MP Galina Danilchenko called the protesters “extremists” and called for the activists not to be allowed to “destabilize” the situation.
Russian riot police have also been deployed to Melitopol to block protests there.
Russian forces allegedly kidnapped another mayor in an occupied city in the region. The mayor of Dniprorudny, Yevgeny Matveev, was kidnapped on Sunday, said Alexander Starukh, head of the regional military administration.
Earlier Wednesday, Ukrainian officials said the third mayor of southern Ukraine, Oleksandr Yakovlev of Skadovsk, and his deputy, Yuri Paliukh, had been “kidnapped” by Russian forces.
“Russian occupiers continue to kidnap democratically elected local leaders in Ukraine,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said. said on Twitter. “States and international organizations should demand from Russia the immediate release of all kidnapped Ukrainian officials!”
Patrick Rivell of ABC News contributed to this report.