Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has pardoned Vladimir Starkov — a Russian officer detained in July while reportedly smuggling ammunition into rebel-held territory in eastern Ukraine ?€” in order to exchange him for an Ukrainian soldier held by pro-Russian separatists, Russian and Ukrainian media reported on Tuesday morning.
Starkov, nicknamed “the Russian major” by Ukrainian media, had previously been sentenced to 14 years in prison for ?€?waging aggressive war against Ukraine.?€? The court claimed he had been doing so ?€?on the orders of the Russian Chief of General Staff [Valery] Gerasimov,?€? Russian news website RBC wrote Tuesday.
Footage of Starkov's interrogation ?€” which shows him saying that Russian servicemen were transferred to Ukraine without their prior knowledge ?€” was uploaded on YouTube by Ukrainian security forces in July.
In August, he was quoted as saying in an interview with the Euronews channel that he had been a regular Russian serviceman, transferred to the border region of Rostov and subsequently to eastern Ukraine.
?€?Senior officers gathered us in a conference room and announced that our positions would be the same, but we should do military service in Ukraine: in the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. It was forbidden to inform our relatives about this,?€? he said, the Euronews website reported.
Starkov has been swapped for the Ukrainian soldier Andriy Hrechanov, one of the former defenders of the Donetsk airport, who, according to the Kiev-based Ukrainian Independent Information Agency UNIAN, had been held by pro-Russian militants in Donetsk.
Russian newspaper Vedomosti wrote Tuesday that the authorities in Kiev had made 17 previous attempts to liberate Hrechanov.