Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov said today that Western mercenaries arrested in Ukraine will be prosecuted and held criminally responsible.
“We urge citizens of foreign countries planning to go fight for the nationalist regime in Kiev to think twice before traveling,” he warned, after reporting that some 200 mercenaries from Croatia had joined a nationalist battalion from Ukraine.
This Thursday, the Russian Ministry of Defense summoned the military attaché of the Croatian embassy in Moscow and updated him on the arrival through Poland of Croatian mercenaries in Ukraine.
Konashenkov said that information was shared with the military diplomat about the illegal actions of Croatian citizen Denis Seler, who participated in the attacks in southeastern Ukraine in 2015 and now organizes detachments of Croatian mercenaries to be sent to Ukraine.
For his part, the head of Russia’s National Center for Defense Control, Colonel General Mijaíl Mizíntsev, warned in press statements that the Priazovsky State University, in the city of Mariúpol, was mined by Ukrainian nationalists.
He indicated that 60 people who were on their way to the humanitarian corridor were kidnapped in Mariúpol and forcibly transported to Local School 34, where they also planted explosives.
“Now these terrorists are using civilians as a human shield, blackmailing the Donetsk People’s Republic advance formations with their willingness to blow up the school with the hostages,” he explained.
