Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Friday the release and return to Ukraine of 10 civilians, including two priests and a local official, detained by Russia.
“We have managed to return ten more of our citizens from Russian captivity,” he wrote on social media, adding that they “have been released and have now returned to Ukraine.” Russia and Ukraine regularly exchange captured soldiers, but the return of civilians is rare.
According to Vladimir Zelensky, the agreement, which Moscow has not yet announced, was prepared with the support of the Vatican.
The released detainees were captured in Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, occupied southern Ukraine or, in the case of five of them, Belarus, a staunch Russian ally.
There is no information about the outlines of the release agreement.
Among them is Nariman Celal, vice president of the Mejlis (Assembly of Crimean Tatars), who was arrested in 2021. Tatars are a historical Muslim community on the peninsula.
According to the Ukrainian president, there are also two Catholic priests on the list – Bogdan Geleta and Ivan Levitsky. According to him, two more released civilians were captured “in 2017-2018.”
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said nothing about the terms of the agreement or whether Ukraine released Russian prisoners in exchange. As for the release of civilians, precedents between the two countries have been rare since February 2022 and the start of the Russian invasion.
The mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was exchanged for Russian prisoners in the first weeks of the conflict. He was captured when Russian soldiers 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.
Source: Le Parisien
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