Russia will investigate the possibility of exchanging captured fighters from the Ukrainian Azov Regiment for Viktor Medvedchuk, a close aide to Vladimir Putin, Russian lawmaker and negotiator Leonid Slutsky said on Saturday.
“We will investigate the issue,” Slutsky, a member of the Russian delegation during recent talks with Kyiv, was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti in response to a question about such an exchange.
Speaking from the separatist city of Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, he said the possibility of such an exchange would be raised in Moscow by “those with prerogatives”.
Viktor Medvedchuk, 67, is a prominent Ukrainian politician and businessman close to the Russian president, who was arrested in mid-April in Ukraine while trying to escape early in the Kremlin’s offensive in late February.
On Friday, the Russian army announced that the last Ukrainian defenders of the strategic city of Mariupol, who had been hiding in Azovstal’s huge steel production for weeks, had surrendered, BGNES reports.
Among them are members of the Azov Regiment, an ultranationalist unit that the Kremlin considers “neo-Nazi” and which Kyiv hopes will be released in exchange for Russian prisoners.
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