Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this Friday, June 28, the release and return to Ukraine of ten civilians, including two priests and a local official, who had been taken prisoner in Russia and Belarus. Russia and Ukraine, at war for more than two years, regularly exchange captured soldiers but the return of civilians is much rarer.
“We managed to bring back ten more of our fellow citizens from Russian captivity,” he wrote on social media, adding that they had been “released and have now returned to Ukraine.”
Captured in Crimea and Belarus
The agreement, which Moscow has not yet reported, was produced with the support of the Vatican, according to Volodymyr Zelensky.
The released detainees had been captured in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, in occupied southern Ukraine or, for five of them, in Belarus, a staunch ally of Russia.
Among them is Nariman Djelal, a vice-president of the Medjlis, the Assembly of Crimean Tatars, arrested in 2021. The Tatars are a historic Muslim community on this peninsula. Two Catholic priests, Bogdan Geleta and Ivan Levytsky, are also on the list, according to the Ukrainian president. Two other released civilians were captured “in 2017-2018”, according to him.
Rare releases
Volodymyr Zelensky did not say anything about the terms of the agreement and did not reveal whether Ukraine had, in exchange, released Russian prisoners. In terms of the release of civilians, there are few precedents between the two countries since February 2022 and the start of the Russian invasion.
Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov, who was exchanged for Russian prisoners in the early weeks of the conflict, was captured when Russian troops entered his town in southern Ukraine, which has since been occupied.
In September 2022, Viktor Medvedchuk, close to Vladimir Putin, was also exchanged by Ukraine, along with Russian soldiers, for Ukrainian prisoners.
Original article published on BFMTV.com
