Kremlin considers swapping Azov fighters for oligarch

MOSCOW will consider exchanging prisoners from Ukraine’s Azov battalion for Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian businessman close to Vladimir Putin, a Russian negotiator said on Saturday.

The RIA Novosti news agency reported that Leonid Slutsky, a senior member of Russia’s negotiating team on Ukraine, said of the swap: “We are going to study the possibility.”

Mr Medvedchuk, 67, is a politician and one of Ukraine’s richest people. Known for his close ties to Mr Putin, he escaped from house arrest after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, but was re-arrested in mid-april.

On Friday, the Russian army announced that the last defenders of the strategic south-eastern port city of Mariupol had surrendered after holding out at the Azovstal steelworks for weeks.

Among the Ukrainian fighters who gave themselves up to the Russian troops were members of the Azov regiment, a former paramilitary unit which has integrated into the Ukrainian armed forces.

Russia described the unit, which has previous links to far-right groups, as a neo-nazi organisation.

On May 26, the Russian Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a request to classify the Azov regiment as a “terrorist organisation”, which could complicate an exchange of these prisoners.

Denis Pushilin, the leader of the Donetsk separatists, said on Saturday that the Ukrainian soldiers who defended the Azovstal plant should be put on trial.

RIA Novosti reported that at the same news conference as Mr Slutsky, Mr Pushilin said: “I believe that a legal case is inevitable – justice must prevail.”