The Mayor of the southern Ukrainian city of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov,
has been abducted by Russian soldiers after invading the city, Ukrainian military officials said Saturday.
In a statement confirming the abduction of the Mayor, Anton Heraschenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, said 10 Russian soldiers entered the premises of Melitopol’s crisis centre on Thursday, put a bag over Fedorov’s head and took him to an unknown location.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also confirmed the incident while condemning the abduction of Fedorov, wrote on Twitter.
“A group of 10 occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov.
He refused to cooperate with the enemy,” he said.
In a video message, Zelensky called Fedorov “a mayor who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community.”
“This is obviously a sign of weakness of the invaders… They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” he said.
“The capture of the Mayor of Melitopol is, therefore, a crime, not only against a particular person, against a particular community, and not only against Ukraine. It is a crime against democracy itself… The acts of the Russian invaders will be regarded like those of Islamic State terrorists,” he said.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also denounced the abduction in a statement, saying the incident was a war crime as international law prohibits the taking of civilian hostages during war.
“We call on the international community to respond immediately to the abduction of Ivan Federov and other civilians, and to increase pressure on Russia to end its barbaric war against the Ukrainian people,” the Ministry said.
The deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Kirillo Timoshenko, previously posted a video on Telegram showing soldiers coming out of a building holding a man dressed in black, his head apparently covered with a black bag.
