Russia on Tuesday paraded some of the Ukrainian sailors it captured during a naval confrontation — and had them read confessions under clear duress admitting their vessels violated Russian territorial waters.
“I deliberately ignored requests via ultra-short-wave band,” Volodymyr Lisovyi, identified as the commander of a military unit in the flotilla of two gunships and one tugboat seized on Sunday, said on camera.
He also admitted there were “small arms on board as well as machine guns.”
Another said he had been ordered to sail to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol in the Sea of Azov.
“We were warned by the border service of the Russian Federation that we were violating Russian law,” Andriy Drach said in footage released by the Russian security service FSB and broadcast on state TV.
“They had repeatedly asked us to leave the territorial waters of the Russian Federation.”
Ihor Voronchenko, the head of the Ukrainian navy, said the sailors were pressured to give false statements.
And the country’s foreign minister, Pavlo Klimkin, told the Associated Press that “even to put prisoners of war on television is already a crime.”
A court in Russian-controlled Crimea ordered 12 of the 24 sailors detained held until Jan. 25 on charges they illegally crossed into Russian territorial waters.
Ukraine’s security service acknowledged that it had officers on the ships conducting counterintelligence for the Ukrainian navy, claiming that was in response to “psychological and physical pressure” by Russia.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was aware that President Trump would be meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin at this weekend’s G-20 summit in Argentina.
He told MSNBC he has one message he’d like Trump to deliver to the Russian leader: “Please get out of Ukraine, Mr. Putin.”
The naval standoff brought worldwide condemnation against Moscow from the United States, its European allies and NATO — and suggestions of mediation.
But Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, during a meeting in Paris with his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, said that wasn’t going to happen.
“I do not see the need for any mediators,” Lavrov said. “I think that this is an absolutely practical matter.”
Earlier, Putin informed German Chancellor Angela Merkel that he is “seriously concerned” about tensions boiling over after Ukraine imposed martial law.
“The imposition of martial law in some regions may pose a risk of escalating tensions in the conflict-hit region, namely the south-east,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
Ukrainian forces have been battling Russian-backed separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine since Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.
With Post wires