SBU official: Russia fabricates cases against POWs to raise their “exchange value”
Andrii Pasternak, head of the Joint Center under the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), spoke about this during a presentation of the project “Made in Russia. Taken Captive,” according to a Ukrinform correspondent.
"As for the convicts from ‘Azov,’ 'Aidar,‘ and 'Dnipro,’ many of them are marines and border guards. We all know how the Russian Federation rigs the judicial process: they set the task of fabricating a story, using coercion and torture, so that our boys or girls give false testimony, and they document it. There are even cases where colleagues from intelligence and the Security Service of Ukraine are being tried. We have numerous cases where a person is being tried, for example, for actions in the Mariupol area, but they have never even been there; they were defending the Kharkiv region and have absolutely no connection to this. This is blatant fabrication, made-up stories," Pasternak said.
According to him, this practice significantly impacts the process of returning prisoners of war.
"They are trying to raise the ‘price’ of the exchange process this way: 'We’re giving you the convicted prisoners, but they still need to be tried.' But only their country’s leader should be the one to judge them,” added Pasternak.
As reported by Ukrinform, the Verkhovna Rada’s Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets stated that the Russian Federation has tortured 406 Ukrainian citizens who had confirmed prisoner-of-war status.
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