Russian President Vladimir Putin with pro-Russian Ukrainian politician Viktor Medvedchuk in Saint Petersburg, July 18, 2019 – Mikhail KLIMENTYEV © 2019 AFP
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Russia will study the possibility of exchanging fighters from the captured Ukrainian Azov regiment for Viktor Medvedchuk, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, a deputy and Russian negotiator, Leonid Sloutski, said on Saturday.
“We will study the issue,” said Leonid Sloutski, a member of the Russian delegation at the last negotiations with Kyiv, when asked about such an exchange, quoted by the Ria Novosti news agency.
Speaking of the separatist city of Donetsk in south-eastern Ukraine, he said the possibility of such an exchange was being raised in Moscow by “those who have the prerogatives”.
Viktor Medvedchuk, 67, is a prominent Ukrainian politician and businessman close to the Russian president, who was arrested in Ukraine in mid-April while on the run since the Kremlin offensive began in late February.
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Since May 2021, the Kremlin-loving man has been under house arrest after being charged with “treason” and “attempted looting of natural resources in Crimea,” the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
Surrender of the last entrenched members of the Azov regiment?
On Friday, the Russian army announced that the last Ukrainian defenders of the strategic city of Mariupol, which had been holed up for weeks in Azovstal’s huge steelworks, had surrendered. Among them are members of the Azov regiment, an ultra-nationalist unit the Kremlin considers “neo-Nazi” who want to liberate Kyiv in exchange for Russian prisoners.
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On May 26, Russia’s Supreme Court must consider a request to designate the regiment as a “terrorist organization,” which could complicate the exchange of these prisoners.
Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin said on Saturday that the Ukrainian soldiers who had defended the Azovstal factory and surrendered should be brought to justice.
“I believe that judgment is inevitable: justice must triumph,” said Denis Pouchiline, quoted by Ria Novosti, during the press conference, which also included Leonid Sloutski.
Original article published on BFMTV.com