\n
Kyiv, Dec 14 (AFP): Ukraine said Wednesday that it had secured the release of a US citizen as well as 64 Ukrainian members of the military in its latest prisoner swap with Russian forces.
\n“Sixty-four soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who fought in Donetsk and Lugansk — in particular participated in the defence of the city of Bakhmut — are going home,” the Ukraine presidency’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak said on social media.<\/p>\n
“It was also possible to free a US citizen who helped our people — Suedi Murekezi.”<\/p>\n
Russia’s state-run TASS news agency has reported that Murekezi was arrested in the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine in June and charged with attending anti-Russian protests and inciting “ethnic hatred”.<\/p>\n
Citing his lawyer, TASS said Murekezi was born in Rwanda and moved to the United States with his family in 1994. The lawyer said Murekezi worked in a nightclub in Kherson city and denied his client was a combatant.<\/p>\n
Russian forces captured Kherson city soon after they invaded Ukraine in February, but Ukrainian troops retook it this autumn. It has been subjected to frequent bouts of Russian shelling since.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian officials say the epicentre of fighting since Kherson’s recapture has been the Donetsk region where Russian forces have for months been trying to capture Bakhmut.<\/p>\n
\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyiv, Dec 14 (AFP): Ukraine said Wednesday that it had secured the release of a US citizen as well as 64 Ukrainian members of the military in its latest prisoner swap with Russian forces. “Sixty-four soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who fought in Donetsk and Lugansk — in particular participated in the defence of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-206967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}