PREGNANT SOLDIER AMONG UKRAINIANS FREED IN PRISONER EXCHANGE

Sat 30 April 2022:

Fourteen Ukrainians, including a pregnant soldier, have been freed in the latest prisoner exchange with Russian forces, Ukraine has said, without revealing the number of Russians returned to Moscow.

“Today, we carried out a new exchange of prisoners. Fourteen of ours are coming home, seven military and seven civilians. One of the military women is five months pregnant,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.

In an interview with the BBC on Friday, Vereshchuk accused Russian forces of deporting large numbers of civilians into Russia and using them as “hostages”.

Wives of Mariupol defenders appeal for soldiers’ evacuation

Two Ukrainian women whose husbands are defending a besieged steel plant in Mariupol have called for any evacuation of civilians to also include soldiers, saying they fear the troops will be tortured and killed if captured by Russian forces.

“The lives of soldiers matter too. We can’t only talk about civilians,” said Yuliia Fedusiuk, 29, the wife of Arseniy Fedusiuk, a member of the Azov Regiment in Mariupol.

She and Kateryna Prokopenko, whose husband, Denys Prokopenko, is the Azov commander, made their appeal in Rome for international assistance to evacuate the Azovstal plant, the last stronghold of Ukrainian resistance in the bombed-out city.

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