Russian Negotiator Says Russia Is Considering Swapping Prisoners Of Ukrainian Azov Regiment With President Putin's Allies

Viktor Medvedchuck. (Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru/The Presidential Press and Information Office)

JAKARTA - Russia will consider swapping prisoners from Ukraine's Azov Regiment for Viktor Medvedchuk, a wealthy Ukrainian businessman close to President Vladimir Putin, a Russian negotiator said Saturday.

"We will study the possibility," said Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia's negotiating team in Ukraine, speaking from the city of Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, RIA Novosti news agency reported, quoted by Daily Sabah on May 21.

Medvedchuk, 67, is one of the richest people in Ukraine and is known to be close to Putin. He is also a politician.

He escaped from house arrest following Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, but was later recaptured by Ukrainian authorities in mid-April.

On Friday, the Russian army announced the last defenders of the strategic port city of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, had surrendered after holding out at the Azovstal steel mill for weeks.

Medvedchuck with President Putin. (Wikimedia Commons/Kremlin.ru/Russian Presidential Press and Information Office)

Among the Ukrainian fighters who surrendered to Russian forces were members of the Azov regiment, a former paramilitary unit that had been integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

Russia describes the unit, which has links to far-right groups, as a neo-Nazi organization.

It is known, that Russia's Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a request to classify the Azov regiment as a terrorist organization, which could complicate this prisoner exchange, on May 26.

Meanwhile, Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk separatists, said on Saturday Ukrainian soldiers fighting at the Azovstal factory should be brought to justice.

"I believe that legal cases are inevitable. Justice must be served," said Pushilin, quoted by RIA Novosti at the same press conference at which Slutsky spoke.