Russian soldiers occupying southern Ukraine’s Melitopol on Saturday kidnapped the mayor of the city, President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian officials have confirmed.
The Ukrainian parliament took to Twitter to announce the abduction saying; ‘A group of 10 occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov’.
‘He refused to cooperate with the enemy,’ it added.
It also went on to state that the mayor was seized when he was at the city’s crisis centre dealing with supply issues.
In a video message, Zelensky confirmed the abduction, calling 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.
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The President went further to add that ‘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’,
Meanwhile, the deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, Kirillo Timoshenko, had 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.
According to the Ukrainian parliament, another regional official, the deputy head of the regional council of Zaporizhzhia — 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of Melitopol — was abducted and then released a few days ago.
Africa Daily News, New York gathered that before the Russian invasion, Melitopol had just over 150,000 inhabitants.
The war, however entered its 17th day on Saturday with Russia now approaching Kyiv.
AFRICA DAILY NEWS, NEW YORK
