Five commanders of who led the three-month defence of Mariupol, the biggest city Russia has captured, returned to Ukraine on Saturday. Russia has denounced their release
President Volodymyr Zelensky brought home from Turkey on Saturday five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol, a highly symbolic achievement that Russia said violated a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year.
The five commanders have been lionized in Ukraine after leading a fierce three-month defence of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant last year, the biggest city Russia has captured. Moscow freed some of them in September in a prisoner swap brokered by Ankara, under terms that required the commanders to remain in Turkey until the end of the war.
In his remarks, Zelensky gave no explanation for why the commanders were allowed to return home now. Turkey’s Directorate of Communications did not respond to a request for comment. Referring to a counter-offensive launched by Ukrainian forces in the past month, Denys Prokopenko, one of the five commanders, told the gathering that his men “will have our word to say in the battles. The most important thing is that Ukraine has seized the strategic initiative and is advancing.”
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