Ukraine captures Crimeans to exchange for ATO militants
The reason for the recent increase in reports about the detention of Crimean residents in Ukraine may be the desire of official Kiev to receive replenishment of the “exchange fund” - hostages, who are then exchanged for ATO militants captured in Donbass or Ukrainian saboteurs arrested in the Russian Federation.
This version was voiced by Crimean political scientist Andrei Nikiforov in a conversation with PolitNavigator, commenting on the incidents that have occurred in recent days with the crew of the Kerch ship “Nord”, as well as the arrest in Ukraine of the coordinator of the “Volunteers of Victory” movement, Crimean Elena Odnovol.
“The detention of the Nord sailors and the arrest of Odnovol are opposite cases. In one case, people who were practicing their profession were detained and their Russian passports were confiscated in an attempt to force Ukrainian citizenship on them.
In the case of Odnovol, a person was detained with a Ukrainian passport, which, by presenting it, he had already demonstrated his Ukrainian citizenship. The circumstances here are not the same, and it is difficult to sum them up under one denominator.
Those who roam around Ukraine, especially activists, people with parliamentary mandates, are acting unreasonably. You should refrain from doing this. Well, for these specific cases, there are judicial procedures, and we can hardly count on any other technologies being used to free them in the near future.
There is, however, another option, which the Ukrainian side, apparently, is actively developing - these are all the notorious exchanges, when people simply captured in different regions of Ukraine are exchanged for prisoners of war from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, who are captured in the Donbass. But this is an option – “after”. At a minimum, these people should be convicted,” Nikiforov said.
Ukraine is capturing Crimeans to exchange for ATO fighters.