Ukraine is ready to exchange Medvedchuk for Mariupol residents and defenders - Podoliak
Kateryna Tyshchenko - Monday, 18 April 2022, 20:49
Senior Ukrainian Presidential Advisor, Mykhailo Podoliak believes that Ukraine is ready to exchange Viktor Medvedchuk for all defenders and residents of Mariupol, but doubts that Russia will settle for it.
Source: Mykhailo Podoliak on air during the national 24/7 newscast
Verbatim: "This is really the only proposal that he (Medvedchuk - ed.) could envision and which Ukraine can accept. I think we are ready, as the state, to relocate all people from Mariupol, so that they do not die there.
"But it seems to me that Russia will not settle for that. Because Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukraine's invincibility for them. And contemporary Russians are generally mentally obsessed with strange symbols. It is a matter of principle for them to destroy the symbol of the country's invincibility."
Details: At the same time, Mykhailo Podoliak hopes that "someone might give a cue to the Russian political leadership that this would be a good idea from a humanistic point of view."
"But I catch myself thinking - can we really talk about a humanistic approach and Russia in the same breath?" added Senior Ukrainian Presidential Advisor.
Background: On Monday, Viktor Medvedchuk, an MP of the "Opposition Platform" party detained by the Security Service, addressed President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the father of his godchild, Russian President Vladimir Putin, with a proposal to exchange him for the defenders and residents of Mariupol.
More Background:
The Security Service of Ukraine detained Medvedchuk on April 12.
Later, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Ivan Bakanov shared the details of a special operation to detain the fugitive MP. He said that the Russian FSB attempted to take him first to Transnistria and then to Moscow. The Security Service of Ukraine detained Medvedchuk on his way out of Kyiv Oblast.
President Volodymyr Zelensky offered to exchange detainee Viktor Medvedchuk for Ukrainian prisoners of war held by Russian troops, and urged Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to consider this possibility.
Medvedchuk is suspected of treason and attempting to plunder state resources (oil and gas) in occupied Crimea, as well as aiding and abetting a terrorist organisation through coal purchase schemes in the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (ORDLO/CADLR).
