the times | Thursday May 26 2022 35Russia has said that it will not consider
any prisoner exchanges of Mariupol’s
defenders until they have been
“properly convicted and sentenced”.
At least 1,000 Ukrainian fighters,
including members of the Azov Battal-
ion, were transferred to Russian-held
territory last week after the Azovstal
steel plant in the city was captured.
President Putin initially said that the
soldiers would be treated “in line with
the relevant international laws”. How-
ever, there have since been calls among
hardliners in the Russian parliament
for them to be regarded as criminals.
Yesterday Andrei Rudenko, the dep-
uty foreign minister, gave support to
this position, saying that any talk of
prisoner swaps would be “premature”.
“We will consider all things afterRussia has said that it will end its block-
ade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports only if
the West agrees to lift sanctions.
Andrei Rudenko, the Russian deputy
foreign minister, said yesterday that
Moscow would be willing to create a
“humanitarian corridor” for vessels
carrying food to leave Ukraine, in
exchange for the removal of trade sanc-
tions and financial restrictions.
About 22 million tonnes of grain are
stuck in Ukraine, one of the world’s big-
gest producers of wheat.
“Solving the food problem requires a
comprehensive approach, including
the removal of sanctions that have been
imposed on Russian exports and finan-
cial transactions,” Rudenko said.
The senior diplomat also demanded
that Ukraine remove mines that Russia
itself planted in the Black Sea in the
weeks after the invasion. Moscow has
turned down a proposal from the
Italian government to clear the mines,
a source told The Times.
“We were ready to send in mine-
sweepers but Russia said no about three
weeks ago,” the Italian government
source said. “We understand Turkey is
now trying to persuade the Russians.”
The source said that it would take a
month to six weeks to sweep for Rus-
sian and Ukrainian mines to create a
safe channel for vessels. The Italian na-
vy could potentially use its Lerici and
Gaeta class minesweepers to do this, he
added. Several Soviet-era YaM and
YarM naval mines have already been
discovered and neutralised by Turkish
and Romanian authorities after the
bombs drifted into their waters.
By blockading Ukraine’s Black Sea
coastline, the Russian navy has placed a
stranglehold on the Ukrainian econ-
omy by halting shipments that account
for about £15 billion a year in export
revenue. Ukraine has only about a
month and a half to get grain suppliesHigh-speed rail link will
take you from Paris to
Berlin in seven hours
Page 36Steel plant’s fighters won’t
be swapped before a trial
Tom Ballout of the country before the start of the
next harvest.
At the World Economic Forum on
Tuesday, Ursula von der Leyen, the
president of the European Commis-
sion, accused Russia of weaponising
food supplies and stealing Ukrainian
grain from occupied territories.
“I strongly deny this. We don’t steal
from anyone,” Rudenko told reporters.
The minister also strongly rebuffed
Lithuania’s proposal to create a “coali-
tion” of naval powers to escort Ukraini-
an cargo via the Black Sea. This pro-
posal “would seriously aggravate the
situation in the Black Sea region,” Ru-
denko said.
Western sanctions are intended to
hobble the Russian economy. President
Biden said that the US would not ex-
tend a waiver that enabled Russia to
continue to pay US bondholders until
yesterday. The decision could push
Moscow closer to the brink of default,
but unlike in most default situations,
Russia is not short of money.
Russia’s debt repayment dues pale in
comparison to its oil and gas revenues,
which stood at £22 billion in April alone
thanks to high energy prices.
Kyiv and its allies are looking at alter-
native means of exporting the country’s
grain, including transporting supplies
by rail to friendly ports on the Baltic.
On Tuesday Lithuania received its first
rail delivery for onward shipment.
However, if the 20 million tonnes of
grain are to be exported from Ukraine
before they go rotten, rail cannot be the
only option. At full capacity, Ukraine’s
railroads could support only about
1.5 million tonnes of grain exports per
month, according to Valerii Tkachov,
Ukrainian railways deputy director of
the commercial department.
In London this week, Gabrielius
Landsbergis, the Lithuanian foreign
minister, proposed a naval escort to
protect the grain ships as they headed
through the Black Sea.Lift sanctions and
we’ll end blockade,
Russia tells West
Tom Ball, Tom Kington Romethose who surrendered to captivity are
properly convicted and sentenced.
Then there may be some other steps,”
he said.
Rudenko was responding to a ques-
tion about the possibility of an ex-
change involving Vadim Shishimarin,
21, a tank commander sentenced to life
in prison by a Kyiv court for shooting an
unarmed man early in the war.
The capture of Azov fighters has
been a propaganda coup for Russia. The
battalion plays a central role in the
justification for the invasion, which was
originally launched with the supposed
goal of “de-Nazification”. The battal-
ion’s founders came from far-right
nationalist groups but it is since said to
have widened recruitment. This week
Russia’s supreme court is expected to
hear an application to designate the
battalion a “terrorist organisation”.troops mass on border to ‘divert’ Ukraine
forests along the border since the Feb-
ruary invasion.
Michael Clarke, a former director of
the think tank Rusi, said it was a “thin
force” purely designed to keep an eye
on the border. “If Belarusians really
cross the border then the [territorial
defence] force will fall back and buy
time for the Ukrainian forces to get
there and deal with it,” he said.
It was a sensible move by Ukraine to
not put regular troops on the border
because they were needed elsewhere,
he said. He predicted that Ukraine
could send such forces to the border
within 24 to 48 hours.
Belarus was unlikely to invade, but
“they are trying to stretch the Ukraini-
ans as far as they can”. He added: “I
think it is a bit of a ploy but I don’t think
the Ukrainians are going to fall for it.”
The majority of Ukraine’s forces arefighting in the eastern Donbas region,
where Russia has been concentrating
its military efforts. Other Ukrainian
forces are focused on defending key
cities, such as Odesa on the Black Sea
and Kharkiv, the country’s second
biggest city.
Earlier this month a Ministry of
Defence analysis of the threat from
Belarus said the presence of its forces
on the border would probably prevent
Ukraine from deploying support opera-
tions on its Donbas front.
The Russians have also moved an
Iskander-M missile division to the
Brest region of Belarus, as close as 30
miles to the border with Ukraine.
“The threat of rocket and airstrikes
on Ukraine from the territory of Bela-
rus is growing,” the Centre for Defence
Strategies, a Ukrainian-based think
tank, said in its latest update.Clarke, however, said that although
the system was a very capable missile, it
did not make Ukraine any more vulner-
able, adding: “Because the Iskander is a
ballistic missile there’s no defence
against it anyway. The Ukrainians don’t
have defensive systems to protect
against it.”
He said its deployment was more
symbolic, adding: “It is a certain
amount of sabre-rattling and it adds to
the pressure.”
Russian troops and aircraft have used
Belarusian territory to reach Ukraine,
but Belarusian forces have not been
directly involved in the war. Western
sanctions against Russia also include
Belarus. According to the Kyiv Inde-
pendent, Roman Golovchenko, the
Belarusian prime minister, said on
Wednesday that his country was
supplying weapons to Russia.from 14 Nato countries involved in manoeuvres on the Estonia-Latvia border aimed at presenting a united front to RussiaJEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES