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The mayor of Melitopolis narrates his arrest by the Russians

The mayor of Melitopol, a city in southern Ukraine occupied by the Russians, recounted today in Paris how he was captured by Russian soldiers on March 11 and called on the French to defy Moscow propaganda.

“I was in a crisis center in Melitopol, Russian soldiers came, they told me they were arresting me on the pretext that I was financing an extremist Ukrainian party, the existence of which I did not even know existed,” Ivan Fedorov told BFMTV.

“I was taken to prison, to a cell where I spent many hours without any means of communication. I could not even call my parents. I heard screams of torture from the cells next door,” he described.

Following the abduction of Ivan Fedorov on March 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky summoned his French counterpart Emanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Solz to help secure his release.

Fedorov was released a few days later: on March 16, the Ukrainian presidency released a video showing Zelensky talking on the phone. Then, on March 21, Tatiana Moskalkova, in charge of human rights issues in the Kremlin, announced her exchange with nine Russian detainees.

“The Russian soldiers abducted me to show my colleagues what they can do to those who refuse to cooperate with Russia,” the mayor told reporters after meeting with French Senate President Gerard Larcher.

Fedorov also said that he learned today, while in Paris, that Russian soldiers had gone to teachers’ homes in Melitopol to force them to adopt Russian school curricula.

“They want to impose new programs on schools from April 1,” he noted.

“We hope this does not happen. It is dangerous for children to return to schools, at a time when Melitopoli is being bombed every day.”

He called on the French to defy Russian propaganda.

“Russian propaganda works very well and EU citizens do not understand what is happening. They believe that the war is far away (…). Citizens need to understand one thing: if you are not united to help us win this war, the war will reach the European Union “.

Source: AMPE

Source: Capital

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