Five commanders of the Ukrainian Azov Regiment, praised in Ukraine for defending the port city of Mariupol last year during an 80-day Russian siege before they surrendered as prisoners of war, have been given a hero's welcome upon returning home.
The men appeared with President Volodymyr Zelensky before a crowd late Saturday in the western city of Lviv after returning to Ukraine from Turkey, where they have been held since September under terms of a prisoner exchange with Russia. Denys Prokopenko, one of the commanders who was returned, said the released fighters would rejoin the front, according a video posted on Twitter by local news media.
“We will definitely say it in battle,” Prokopenko told reporters in Lviv. Asked if he would fight on the front lines, he replied, “That's why we returned to Ukraine.”
Moscow reacted angrily to the news that Azov fighters had returned to Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov accused Turkey of violating an agreement to keep the men on its territory until the end of the war. There was no immediate comment from Turkish authorities. The government in Kyiv did not provide a public explanation for how or why the fighters were being sent home.
Mr Peskov claimed that the decision was related to what he said was Ukraine's failure in the counteroffensive that started last month.
Ukraine claims small but steady gains in its grueling campaign to retake territory in the country's south and east. But Mr Peskov said Turkey had been pressured by fellow NATO members to allow Ukraine home to distract from faltering efforts to regain territory. He provided no evidence for his claim.
Russian troops reduced Mariupol to rubble before capturing it, but Azov warriors then held out for weeks in the giant steelworks of the city of Azovstal, living in underground bunkers under relentless bombardment.
They surrendered on May 20 under government orders in Kyiv. Still, their resistance has made them a symbol of the country's military defiance and many Ukrainians see their return as an urgent national priority. Mr Zelensky has repeatedly promised to guarantee the release of all Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The Azov warriors are reviled in Russia, and the Kremlin's propaganda machine has long sought to use their right-wing regiments as proof of its false claim that the Ukrainian nation was infested with Nazism.
The men were in Turkey under a deal announced in September under which 215 Ukrainian prisoners of war were freed in exchange for the release of Viktor Medvedchuk, a wealthy Ukrainian businessman and close friend of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, and 54 other Russians. prisoner of war. It is unclear how many members of the Azov battalion are still in prison.
Mr Zelensky visited Ankara on Friday and Saturday for talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey ahead of a major NATO summit in Lithuania starting on Tuesday, where fledgling Ukraine's application for membership of the alliance will be high on the agenda. Turkey has opposed a Russian invasion, and Erdogan has expressed support for Ukraine's application for membership in NATO, but he has also sought to maintain close ties with Putin.
The Ukraine bid has been a thorny issue for the alliance, with some members pressing for quicker action than others. In an interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria that aired on Sunday, President Biden said it was “too early” to start the process to allow Ukraine to join while the fighting continues.
Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that no decision is made on whether Zelensky would attend the summit in person, although NATO's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said Friday that Zelensky would participate in the first meeting of the new NATO-Ukraine Council.
The Azov fighters are back home in 500 days since Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine. Many Ukrainians view the date as a moment to reflect on the death and destruction the country has faced, but also as the start of a new phase of heroic resistance against Moscow.
Here's something else to know:
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In a taped interview with ABC's “This Week,” Zelensky said that Putin would be “forced to enter into dialogue with the civilized world” if Ukraine's counterattack was successful in advancing to the occupied Crimean peninsula. But he reiterated that he would not agree to any peace deal ceding territory to Russia.
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Mr Zelensky admitted in an ABC interview that he wished the counteroffensive had moved more quickly. Hanna Malyar, Ukraine's deputy defense minister, reported heavy fighting but no significant change along the eastern and southern fronts late Sunday. But he said Kyiv troops had successfully advanced on the south side of the destroyed city of Bakhmut, where General Oleksandr Syrsky, commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, said in a Telegram post that Kyiv troops were making progress.
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President Andrzej Duda of Poland met Mr Zelensky on Sunday during a visit to the western Ukrainian city of Lutsk, where they attended a church service commemorating the massacre of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists during World War II. Poland, another NATO member, is a staunch supporter of Ukraine.
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The death toll from Russian shelling in Lyman, a town in the Donetsk region, on Saturday rose to nine, Pavlo Kyrylenko, governor of the Ukrainian region, write on Telegram. Another civilian was also killed on Saturday in the town of Avdiivka, he said.
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Ukraine appeared to confirm that its troops were behind the explosion in October that partially destroyed the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia and the Crimean Peninsula, one of the most spectacular attacks on Moscow's interests since the full-scale invasion began.
While Ukrainians celebrate the attack on the bridge as an affront to Putin, who has taken personal pride in its construction, the government in Kyiv has yet to officially lay claim to it. But on Saturday, Ukraine's deputy defense minister Hanna Malyar called the explosion one of the country's achievements in the 500 days since Russia's full-scale invasion began. Responding to the post, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, said the government in Kyiv is a “terrorist regime”.
Paul Sonne reporting contribution.