INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Moscow will consider exchanging prisoners from Ukraine's Azov battalion for Viktor Medvedchuk, a wealthy Ukrainian businessman close to
President Vladimir Putin, a Russian negotiator said on Saturday."We are going to study the possibility," said Leonid Slutsky, a senior
member of Russia's negotiating team on Ukraine, speaking from the separatist city of Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, the RIA Novosti news
from house arrest after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February but was re-arrested in mid-April.On Friday the Russian army announced that
the last defenders of the strategic port city of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, had surrendered after holding out at the Azovstal
steelworks for weeks.Among the Ukrainian fighters who gave themselves up to the Russian troops were members of the Azov regiment, a former
groups, as a neo-Nazi organisation.On May 26, the Russian Supreme Court is scheduled to consider a request to classify the Azov regiment as
a "terrorist organisation," which could complicate an exchange of these prisoners.Denis Pushilin, leader of the Donetsk separatists, said
Saturday that the Ukrainian soldiers who defended the Azovstal plant should be put on trial."I believe that a legal case is inevitable:
justice must prevail," said Pushilin, quoted by Ria Novosti at the same news conference at which Slutsky spoke.
