Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Saturday brought home from Turkey five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol, a highly symbolic achievement that Russia said contravened a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year.
Russia denounced the release.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ankara had promised under the exchange agreement to keep the men in Turkey.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Presidential Press Service handout
In honor of the 500th day of the war, Zelenskiy also visited Snake Island, a Black Sea outcrop that Russian forces seized on the day of the invasion and later abandoned.
The five commanders have been lionized in Ukraine after leading a fierce three-month defense of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant last year, the biggest city Russia has captured.
“We are returning home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home,” said Zelenskiy, who met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Istanbul on Friday.
Thousands of civilians were killed in Mariupol when Russian forces laid the city to waste in the first months of the war.
The Ukrainian defenders held out in tunnels and bunkers under the Azovstal plant, until finally ordered by Kyiv to surrender in May last year.
Moscow freed some of them in September last year in a prisoner swap brokered by Ankara, under terms that required the commanders to remain in Turkey until the end of the war.
“No one informed us about this. According to the agreements, these ringleaders were to remain on the territory of Turkey until the end of the conflict,” Peskov told Russia’s RIA news agency.
Peskov said the release was a result of heavy pressure from Turkey’s NATO allies ahead of next week’s summit of the military alliance at which Ukraine hopes to receive a positive sign about its future membership.
Zelenskiy gave no explanation about why the commanders were allowed to return home.
The Turkish Directorate of Communications did not respond to a request for comment.
In a ceremony later alongside the men in the western city of Lviv, Zelenskiy thanked Erdogan for helping secure their release and pledged to bring home all remaining prisoners.
He said that before the outbreak of war, “many people in the world still did not understand what we are, what you are, what to expect from us and what our heroes are. Now everyone understands.”
Referring to a counter-offensive launched by Ukrainian forces in the past month, Denys Prokopenko, one of the five commanders, told the gathering that his men “will have our word to say in the battles. The most important thing is that Ukraine has seized the strategic initiative and is advancing.”
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