There Are 2.500 Prisoners From Azovstal, Ukrainian President Sends Intelligence Directorate For Release: The Target Is To Bring Them Home Alive

Surrender of Ukrainian troops from Azovstal. (Wikimedia Commons/Mil.ru)

JAKARTA - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assigned the Main Intelligence Directorate to handle the return of soldiers who left the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol and had to be successful.

Negotiations on a prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia, including the military leaving the Azovstal factory are being carried out by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. His task was to return Ukrainian citizens home.

"We know what can be agreed with Russia, we know this price. We know they can't be trusted. The Main Intelligence Directorate has to deal with this issue and deliver the results. The only result is to bring people home," President Zelensky said, launching the official website of the Presidency of Ukraine, June 7.

President Zelensky further explained that the Main Intelligence Directorate had fulfilled the first part of the task, bringing people out of the factory alive.

"Today there is a second part, to bring them home alive. This mission does not consist of these two steps," he said.

He explained that the deputy directorates are experts who should work for the release of the prisoners, because their professionalism has been proven in a number of important operations.

"That's why I trust them personally, and we expect results from them," he said, adding that the task was not easy.

President Zelensky noted that there may be more than 2.500 prisoners from Azovstal in certain districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Regarding the treatment of these detainees, including the intention to hold a so-called public trial, President Zelensky said he was not ready to comment on Russia's plans, as they are constantly changing them, and many people are setting PR for themselves.

As to whether these people were tortured, President Zelensky believes it is not in the Russian side's interest, "because they are ordinary prisoners whose conditions are monitored by the world community."