Russian television broadcast a video on Monday of two Britons arrested while participating in the fighting in Ukraine asking Prime Minister Boris Johnson to negotiate their release.
The two men, who were clearly exhausted in the video, asked to be exchanged Ukrainian businessman Viktor Medvedchuk A confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was recently arrested in Ukraine.
It was not clear to what extent Sean Penner and Aiden Aslin spoke freely in the recording. The two spoke at the request of an unidentified man.
The recording did not specify where the two men were detained or who had arrested them, Russian forces or pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine.
The recording was made as an interview with journalist Andrei Rudenko of VGTRK.
In the recording, Rudenko shows the two men a video clip published last week by Oksana Marchenko, Medvedchuk’s wife, in which she demanded that her husband be exchanged for the British.
Then the two detainees asked in English to exchange them with the businessman.
According to Russian media, the two men were arrested after they participated in the fighting alongside the Ukrainian forces in Mariupol. They are believed to be from a unit that surrendered last week to Russian forces.
Viktor Medvedchuk in the hands of the Ukrainian army
For its part, the Ukrainian security services released a video today Medvedchuk appears calling for his exchange With Ukrainian elements fighting in the besieged city of Mariupol.
In the recording, Medvedchuk said: “I want to Ask Russian President Vladimir Putin Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky exchanged me with Ukrainian residents and defenders of Mariupol.”
In this undated video, the businessman is dressed in black and sitting at a table.
On April 12, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proposed to Moscow to replace Medvedchuk, 67, who was detained on the same day, with the Ukrainians detained in Russia.
In response to a question about a possible exchange, the Kremlin said Medvedchuk “is not a Russian citizen,” noting that it did not know if he wanted Moscow to intervene in his case.
The Ukrainian security services had previously shown a picture of Viktor Medvedchuk, handcuffed and wearing a Ukrainian army uniform. He was arrested, according to Kyiv, after an “extraordinary and dangerous” operation carried out by the Ukrainian security services.