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.”
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary
RSS