“I would like to talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zhelensky.
Zhelensky proposed to Moscow on April 12 as the date for the transfer of Medvetsk to the Ukrainians held in Russia. On the same day, he was arrested.
However, with the exception of the Kremlin headline, the 67-year-old businessman claimed he was not a Russian citizen and had nothing to do with “special military operations.”
Medvedev has been under house arrest since May 2021 on charges of “high treason” and “attempting to steal natural resources from the Crimea” of the Ukrainian peninsula, which annexed Russia in 2014. On February 26, two days after the start of the Russian invasion, police said the businessman had fled.
According to Forbes magazine, Ukraine is the 12th richest country in the world with a net worth of $ 620 million. His relationship with Putin is well known, and there are reports that the Russian president is the godfather of one of his daughters. In addition, the businessman is the founder of the pro-Russian “Platform for Opposition to Life” party, which had about 30 members in the Ukrainian parliament before it was banned in March after the Russian invasion.
On the Russian side, state television showed video of two prisoners of war captured during the fighting in Ukraine, identified as Shawn post and two prisoners identified as Aidan Aslin.
In a video aired on Russian television, the two Britons ask to be transferred to Medvedev, not to mention whether they were detained by Russian forces or by separatist allies in Moscow in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
This recording is presented in an interview with Andrei Rudenko, a journalist with the Russian public channel VGTRK. The reporter showed the two a video released last week by Medvetsuk’s wife, Oksana Marchenko, who called on her husband to exchange with the two Britons. The two then ask for an exchange in English.
According to Russian media, two British soldiers were captured last week after fighting with Ukrainian forces in Mariupol, a unit that had surrendered to Moscow forces.
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