Militants captured about 30 Ukrainian servicemen over the past week, chief of the prisoner swap center Volodymyr Ruban said.
“It is known and confirmed that about 30 men are now in captivity [taken prisoner over the past week], including 20 from the [Donetsk] airport area and eleven servicemen of the 20th battalion from the Krasny Partyzan area,” Ruban said in a program aired by the Ukrainian channel Inter on Sunday night.
As to how many Ukrainian servicemen are being held by militants, Ruban said, “A lot and the digits are changing constantly. The problem is we cannot identify servicemen missing in the latest battles: they are either under the [Donetsk airport] debris or in captivity, and such numbers are much larger than I have mentioned.”
Ruban is confident that the captured servicemen will be freed at some point. He said that three men, “who were not cyborgs”, were released. “All the rest will be exchanged consistent with the list provided by Donetsk side,” he noted.
“It would not be an all-for-all exchange,” the center head indicated.
He said the prisoner swap would take place shortly but declined to mention an exact date.
“It would be unrealistic to give a precise date due to the events in Volnovakha and Mariupol,” Ruban said.
He underlined that the captured soldiers “were being treated as prisoners of war.”
“They definitely have the POW status; they are not beaten or subjected to physical violence. They are given medical aid,” the head of the center said.
According to Ruban, they may be dead servicemen left under the Donetsk airport debris or even some survivors.
“Six days have passed since Sunday but there have been precedents of people surviving under debris for 22 days, there is still a chance of survivors left in niches. It is necessary to stop bombings of the airport, this is the first condition for clearing up the debris and retrieving the bodies and, we hope, some survivors,” Ruban said.
