security services of Ukraine published on Monday a video showing the businessman Viktor Medvedchukclose to the Russian president Vladimir Putin who was arrested in Ukraine, asking to be exchanged for besieged soldiers and civilians in the city of Mariupol.
On the Russian side, state television published a video of two prisoners who were identified as British citizens Shaun Pinner and Aiden Aslin, captured in the fighting in Ukraine. asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson to negotiate his release.
“I want to address the Russian president Vladimir Putin y al Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to ask them to change me to Ukrainian defenders and residents of Mariupol,” he said in a video in which he is dressed in black and looks directly into the camera.
Zelensky had proposed on April 12 in Moscow to exchange Medvedchukwho had been arrested that same day, by Ukrainian captives in Russia.
The Kremlin sidestepped the issue by stating that the 67-year-old businessman is not a Russian citizen and has no link to the “special military operation.”
pro-russian tycoon
Medvedchuk He had been under house arrest since May 2021 after being accused of “high treason” and “attempted looting of natural resources in Crimea”, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.
On February 26, two days after the start of the Russian invasion, the police confirmed that he had fled.
The tycoon is the 12th richest man in Ukraine and has an estimated fortune of $620 million, according to Forbes magazine. His links with Putin are known and there are reports that he is the godfather of one of his daughters.
The businessman is the founder of the pro-Russian party “Opposition Platform for Life”, which had about 30 deputies in the Ukrainian Parliament, before being banned in March after the invasion launched by Russia. (AFP)