Kyiv: Southern Ukraine’s Melitopol Mayor was kidnapped by Russian forces, as the forces occupied the city on Friday, said President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian officials.
Taking to Twitter Ukraine’s parliament said, “A group of 10 occupiers kidnapped the mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov.”
Further adding they said, “He refused to cooperate with the enemy.”
They said that the mayor was clutched when he was dealing with the supply issues, at the city’s crisis centre.
Late on Friday evening, Zelensky in a video message confirming the news, called Fedorov “a mayor who bravely defends Ukraine and the members of his community”.
He said, “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 says that the kidnap of the mayor is not only a crime against Ukraine but against democracy. 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 as those of Islamic State terrorists.”
Kirillo Timoshenko, Deputy Head of Ukraine’s Presidential Administration, previously posted a video on Telegram showing army men stepping out of a building, holding a man dressed in black, with his head being covered with a bag.
As per the Ukrainian Parliament, the deputy head of the regional council of Zaporizhzhia, another regional official, was kidnapped and released a few days ago.
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