3:06 am: The mayor of Melitopol kidnapped by Russian soldiers
The mayor of Melitopol was kidnapped on Friday by Russian soldiers occupying this city in southern Ukraine, information confirmed by President Volodymyr Zelensky. According to the Ukrainian Parliament, Ivan Fedorov was arrested while he was in the city’s crisis center to deal with supply issues.
“This is obviously a sign of the invaders’ weakness (…) They have moved to a new stage of terror in which they are trying to physically eliminate representatives of legitimate local Ukrainian authorities,” Zelensky said in a statement. video message. “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 as such (…). The acts of the Russian invaders will be equated with those of the terrorists of the Islamic State”.