Capture of Russian soldiers prompts Putin denials
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TWO Russian soldiers captured while fighting in war-torn eastern Ukraine are being transported to the capital Kiev, a Ukrainian military spokesman said yesterday.
The Russians were wounded and taken prisoner near the front line town of Shchastia in the Luhansk region on Sunday, Ukrainian officials reported.
Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine have been fighting government troops for a year, and Russia has vehemently denied it is supplying them with weaponry or troops.
When several Russian soldiers were captured on Ukrainian territory last summer, Russian President Vladimir Putin said they had simply got lost.
Asked about the new reports yesterday, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov again denied any Russian involvement.
“We have said repeatedly that there are no Russian troops in Donbass,” Peskov said, referring to eastern Ukraine.
On Sunday, the separatist mouthpiece Luhansk Information Center said the men identified by Ukraine as Russian officers were in fact two policemen from Luhansk who had been taken prisoner near Shchastia. Vladislav Seleznev, spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff, told reporters that the two men are now being questioned by the Ukrainian Security Service and are on their way to Kiev where they will face the media.
Another Ukrainian military spokesman, Andriy Lysenko, told a televised briefing that the capture of the men will no longer allow Russia to deny its military presence in Ukraine.
“They were there on a mission and they were killing our people,” he said.
Ukrainian Security Service chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko has hinted that Ukraine will not seek to exchange the men for any Ukrainians that the separatists or Russia may be holding. He was quoted by the Interfax agency as saying that the men “are facing criminal responsibility.”
A video posted by a member of parliament on Sunday showed one man who said he was a Russian Army sergeant.
He was shown lying in a hospital bed and introduced himself as Sergeant Alexander Alexandrov of the Russian Special Forces from the Volga River city of Togliatti.
He said he was operating in the area in a group consisting of 14 men and had been based in the rebel stronghold of Luhansk since March 6.
He and his comrades had been rotating in and out of the area around Shchastia every four to five days, he said.
More than 6,100 people have been killed in the conflict, which has left large parts of Ukraine’s industrial heartlands in ruins. A cease-fire brokered by Russia and Western nations in February has made the fighting less intense and deadly but the skirmishes between the separatists and Ukrainian troops are still a daily occurrence.
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