SELIGER (Tver Region), August 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that during his meeting in Minsk with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, the latter gave his word that the recently detained Russian paratroopers would be returned home.
“I believe this is just a technical issue. Petro Poroshenko and I talked about this [in Minsk] and he affirmed that the Russian military servicemen would be handed back over to Russia, just as we continue to return soldiers [to Ukraine] from the Ukrainian Army,” Putin said.
Putin said that the Russian military personnel detained in Ukraine “had just gotten lost.”
“In fact, this is the case, I’m talking seriously. I believe that they had just gotten lost because there are no boundary markers there,” the president noted.
On Monday, Ukraine’s Security Council claimed it detained ten armed Russian paratroopers in the east of the country near the border with Russia. A source at the Russian Defense Ministry told RIA Novosti that the Russian servicemen were patrolling the border and could have ended in Ukraine by accident. The soldiers did not resist arrest, according to the source. The detained paratroopers have been transferred to a detention facility in Kiev.
