MADRID, 23 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, has ruled out the exchange of the Ukrainian opposition deputy Viktor Medvedchuk for the military of the Ukrainian forces arrested after the seizure of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
“We have already said that Medvedchuk is a citizen of Ukraine, and he is not a military man,” Peskov has settled, who has already on different occasions shown the refusal of the President’s government, Vladimir Putin, to exchange detained Ukrainian soldiers in exchange for the famous deputy pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life.
“In the case of the people who surrendered in Azovstal, we are talking about the military and members of nationalist formations, so they are completely different categories and here we can hardly talk about exchanges,” the Kremlin spokesman explained.
Regarding the possible exchange of these Ukrainian combatants with the Russian military, Peskov has preferred not to go into details and has limited himself to pointing out that the surrender of prisoners from one side to the other is a process that occurs “constantly in one way or another “and leaves the next step in Ukraine’s hands. “It is they who, if necessary, will speak,” he has said.
Before Peskov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Andrei Rudenko, has addressed the issue, limiting any exchange of prisoners made in Azovstal “that does not contradict common sense.”
Meanwhile, all the Ukrainian prisoners who laid down their arms in Azovstal remain in custody in the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk, where they are due to be tried under an “international court”.
This has been made known by Denis Pushilin, the leader of this self-proclaimed pro-Russian republic, who has assured that “the statute of the court is currently being drawn up,” according to what he told the Interfax news agency.
On Friday, Russia reported the total withdrawal of the Ukrainian Army from the Azovstal steel plant, the last redoubt in which forces loyal to kyiv remained entrenched in the besieged city of Mariupol.
According to figures provided by Moscow, since May 16, about 2,450 soldiers from the Ukrainian forces and fighters from paramilitary groups, such as the Azov Battalion, have laid down their weapons and left the Azovstal plant. Among those arrested, there are 78 women and some foreign citizens.
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