MOSCOW, April 13. /TASS/. Ukraine’s current regime apparently hopes that its proposal for exchanging the leader of the Opposition Platform - For Life party, Viktor Mevdedchuk, will help secure the release of the high-ranking foreign military specialists, who according to certain evidence, are trapped on the premises of the iron and steel works Azovstal in Mariupol, the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin, told TASS on Wednesday.
The analyst doubts that the real purpose of Kiev’s proposal for exchanging Medvedchuk for all remaining militants of the Azov battalion is to save small fry.
"All this fuss is not about the rank-and-file, who in fact have already been written off. In focus there are very concrete people. The attempts to evacuate them have already resulted in the loss of eight helicopters. Four ships were dispatched to Mariupol for the same purpose to no avail. Lastly, there was a breakout attempt, in which the encircled group sustained heavy casualties. Apparently, Medvedchuk, or the person whom they present as Medvedchuk, is their last attempt to achieve the release of the high-ranking foreign nationals. May they say first who are the ones they want to be exchanged," Zharikhin said.
He speculated that if the man proposed for an exchange is really Medvedchuk, then the Ukrainian special services might have seized him a long time ago and kept in custody just in case, as the last resort.
"Now it’s precisely this type of extreme situation. The question arises who are these very important people for whose sake they (the Ukrainian authorities - TASS) are ready to use their last resource," Zharikhin wonders.
At the same time, the analyst stressed that for now it was impossible to say for certain if the photographs that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and the security service SBU have presented were genuine and the man in them was Medvedchuk.
"First, it is essential to find out if there is Medvedchuk himself in both photos. This has not been confirmed yet. What I see is two photographs. Making a forgery with the current IT technologies is not a problem. At least, there must be a video showing him say a few words in front of the camera," Zharikhin believes.
Ukraine’s security service SBU and President Vladimir Zelensky on Tuesday said Medvedchuk had been detained. He demonstrated a photograph of a handcuffed man looking like Medvedchuk and proposed his exchange for Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry said the "regime in Kiev continued attempts to evacuate from Mariupol the ringleaders of the nationalist regiment Azov and foreign mercenaries." Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said here had been several failed attempts to take them out of the city by helicopter. An abortive attempt to evacuate them by sea followed in April 9. And on April 11, Russian aircraft upset another attempt by the Ukrainian military personnel to break out of Mariupol in armored vehicles.