Russia will explore the possibility of exchanging fighters from the Ukrainian Azov Battalion captured by pro-Russian Ukrainian MP and millionaire Viktor Medvedchuk, Russian negotiator and parliamentarian Leonid Slutsky said Saturday.
“Let’s study the issue,” Slutsky said.a member of the Russian delegation at the latest talks with Kyiv, who was quoted by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti when asked about such a prisoner exchange.
Slutsky, who spoke at a press conference in separatist Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, said the possibility of a swap would be mentioned in Moscow by “those with prerogatives.”
Viktor Medvedchuk, 67, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested again in mid-April in Ukraine after fleeing the start of the Russian military offensive on February 24.
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Medvedchuk has been under house arrest since May 2021. after being accused of “high treason” and “attempted plunder of natural resources in Crimea”, in the Ukrainian peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014.
On Friday, the Russian army announced the surrender of the last Ukrainian defenders of the strategic city of Mariupol, who had entrenched themselves at the Azovstal metallurgical complex for several weeks. Among them are members of the Azov Battalion, an ultra-nationalist unit that the Kremlin considers neo-Nazi and that Kyiv hopes to release in exchange for Russian prisoners.
Next Thursday, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation is to consider the petition for classification Azov battalion as a “terrorist organization”, which could make it difficult to exchange prisoners.
This was stated on Saturday at the same press conference by the leader of the Donetsk separatists Denis Puchilin. The Ukrainian soldiers who defended the Azovstal plant and surrendered must be judged.
