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Recently released Azov commanders to return to battle — Ukrainian official

Ukrainian National Guard chief Alexander Pivnenko claimed that there was nothing barring them from participating in military activities

MOSCOW, July 31. /TASS/. The commanders of Ukraine’s Azov nationalist battalion (designated as a terrorist organization and outlawed in Russia) who returned home from Turkey will return to fighting as part of the National Guard, the agency’s chief Alexander Pivnenko said.

He claimed in an interview with the Ukrainskaya Pravda online media outlet that there was nothing barring them from participating in military activities. "They are training, and they will perform their missions like everyone else," the National Guard commander stated. According to him, this may happen very soon, "depending on the situation on the frontline; perhaps, within a month."

On July 8, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky said that he was returning home along with five commanders of the Azov Battalion who had been staying in Turkey. Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin told TASS that the situation around the handover of the Azov commanders to Kiev highlighted Turkey’s failure to fulfill its obligations on the issue. Russian President Vladimir Ptuin confirmed on July 29 that there had been agreements between Moscow and Ankara about the Azov militants’ stay in Turkey. Chairman of the Russian Federation Council (the upper house of parliament) Defense and Security Committee Viktor Bondarev pointed out that the need for the Azov commanders to stay under house arrest in Turkey until the end of the special military operation was a cornerstone agreement related to prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted that Turkey had the right to develop relations with Ukraine but Russia expected that they would not aim to harm Moscow.

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