According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, several high-ranking officers involved in the defense of the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol were brought home from Turkey. “Home,” Zelenskyy captioned a photo on his Telegram channel on Saturday that showed him on the plane with three commanders of the Azov regiment, the chief of the 36th Marine Brigade Serhiy Volynsk and the commander of the 12th Brigade of the National Guard Denys Schlehu, shows. The men were taken prisoner by the Russians after Azovstal was conquered, but were then extradited to Turkey.
They have now been returned to their homeland “after negotiations with the Turkish side,” according to the Ukrainian presidential administration. Selenskyj met her at Istanbul airport and congratulated her on her return.
epicenter of the fighting
Shortly after Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine began, the port city of Mariupol became the epicenter of bitter fighting. The battles around the city surrounded by Russian troops lasted several months. In the end, several thousand Ukrainian soldiers, including fighters from the nationalist Azov regiment, were holed up in the Azovstal steelworks. The last defenders only surrendered in May.
Russia actually wanted to put the Ukrainian fighters on trial. The nationalist Azov regiment in particular has served Moscow time and again as justification for the more than 16-month war of aggression and for the claim that it is allegedly “liberating” Ukraine from “fascists”. Nevertheless, she later deported several commanders of the regiment to Turkey.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticized the return of the Ukrainian soldiers as a “direct violation of existing agreements” on both the Turkish and Ukrainian sides. The liberation of the Azov commanders from Russian captivity was conditional on their remaining in Turkey until the end of the war, he said. The Kremlin spokesman speculated that NATO had obviously exerted great pressure on Ankara so that Zelenskyy could achieve success before the NATO summit and in view of the “defeats in the counter-offensive”.
