Kiev wants to swap two Russian POWs for Savchenko and 400 Ukrainians

Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the head of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, has proposed a POW swap with Russia in which two Russian officers captured in eastern Ukraine on May 16 would be exchanged for Nadezhda Savchenko and 400 Ukrainians. Gerashchenko says the exchange should take place after the two Russian POWs are taken to court. He called the two men “war criminals.”

The arrest of two officers allegedly from Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (the army’s foreign military intelligence division, also known as the GRU) in the separatist region of eastern Ukraine was announced by Ukrainian officials on May 17. Representatives of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic in the east of Ukraine have claimed that the two men, identified as Alexander Alexandrov and Evgeniy Erofeev, are Lugansk police officers.

Nadezhda Savchenko is a Ukrainian soldier currently on trial in Russia for allegedly aiding the murder of Russian journalists. Her lawyer has said that the question of POW exchanges should be posed to politicians and diplomats.

The Russian media have shown a video of the interrogation of one of the POWs. He identifies himself as Sargent Alexandrov and says that he serves in the third brigade of the Main Intelligence Directorate’s special forces in Togliatti, a city in Russia. He says his commander is Evgeniy Erofeev.

The Russian Ministry of Defense has not commented on the situation. Vladimir Komoedov, the head of the Russian parliamentary committee on defense, has said that information on the arrest in Ukraine must be investigated. He says he does not believe the two men are in any way connected with the Russian army.