The pro-Russian leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, assured on Monday that the Ukrainian prisoners of the Azovstal steel mill will be tried in a court that is planned to be created in that territory.
The defenders of the Azovstal steel plant, in the city of Mariúpol, gave up their resistance last week and surrendered to the Russian troops.
Pushilin told the Russian Interfax agency that all "Azovstal prisoners are in the territory of the DPR." The pro-Russian leader thus denied any information that placed a part of them in Russian territory. The Meduza.io media reported last week that 83 had been transferred to Taganrog, in the Russian oblast of Rostov-on-Don.
Pushilin added that "an international court is planned to be installed on the territory of the republic" of Donetsk to try the Ukrainian military from Azovstal.
These statements came on the same day that a Ukrainian court in Kyiv sentenced a Russian soldier to life in prison for war crimes.
Vadim Shishimarin, 21, had pleaded guilty to killing a 62-year-old civilian on February 28 in the Ukrainian town of Chupajivka after being ordered to shoot him.
As reported by the Russian Ministry of Defense, since Monday, May 16, 2,439 Ukrainian fighters who had resisted the Russian siege at the Azovstal steel mill for weeks had surrendered. The head of that department, Minister Sergei Shoigu, assured that the last 531 surrendered on Friday, May 20.
Denís Pushilin's statements come at a time when the fate of the Ukrainian military is still uncertain. Andrei Rudenko, a Russian deputy foreign minister, did not rule out a prisoner swap, but neither did he confirm it. "This is probably all being discussed. I'll admit any possibility that makes common sense," he said.
For his part, the deputy chairman of the Defense Committee of the Duma (Lower House of the Russian parliament), Yuri Shvitkin, told Tass that it was "absolutely correct" to judge the defenders of the nationalist Azov regiment, to whose ranks a large part belong. of the defenders of the steel mill.
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