Turned adrift: Russia officially refuses to acknowledge its soliers captured in Ukraine
The Russian Defense Ministry repudiated any connection to GRU special forces fighters Alexander Alexandrov and EugeniyYerofeyev who were captured by Ukrainian military in the territory controlled by the unrecognised Donetsk republic.
In the answer to the request of Sergei Krivenko, a member of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation, who asked to confirm the status of the detainees,the Ministry states that the men did military service in Russia, but came to Ukraine only after their dismissal.
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On May, 16 Ukrainian soldiers (92nd brigade and battalion ‘Aydar’) detained a group of Russian subversives near the town of Shchastya in eastern Ukraine. The Russians were trying to seize a strategic bridge close to a CHP in Luhansk.
Read more: Kremlin washes hands of Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine, calls them ‘mercenaries’
During the interrogation, the Russian detainees said they had arrived in Ukraine in March as part of a battalion of 220 people. According to Alexandrov and Yerofeyev, in Russia they were serving in the 3rd Guards brigade of Russia’s special forces which is deployed in Togliatti.
