The men, who she says she assumed were members of Russian special forces, bundled her into a van and drove for three hours until they were in Russia, she added.
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Putin was pictured shaking hands with French President Francois Hollande as he arrived at the capital’s Elysee Palace this morning ahead of the long-awaited summit, which has been overshadowed by global concerns about Russia’s military intervention in Syria this week.
The deal supplements a broad agreement signed in February aimed at ending the conflict between the Western-aligned Ukrainian government and Russia-backed rebels in the east.
The announcement of the beginning of the small-weapons withdrawal came after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko voiced cautious optimism over the future of a peace deal but said the war was not over.
The separatists, with considerable Russian backing and equipment, now control sizable portions of eastern Ukraine along the Russian border.
“There is no doubt that this is an aggressive war against my country, against Ukraine”.
The Kiev court trying the two Russians said a request by their defense lawyers for the trial to take place in Luhansk region, where the soldiers were captured, would be considered, the BBC said. The Pentagon had been discussing the radar for months, and it wasn’t until a high-profile meeting between Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin that Obama made a decision to finalize the deal.
“Over the last few days we have heard conciliatory statements from the Russian side in which, in particular, it called for the establishment of an anti-terrorist coalition or warned of fire danger to flirt with terrorists”, he said.
“Despite the ceasefire, the enemy, as previously, is keeping significant forces in forward positions, including heavy weapons, in defiance of the Minsk agreements”, military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a briefing. “But really hard to believe”.
But Moscow claims the two – Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov – are “volunteers”: retired servicemen who joined pro-Russian militias fighting in Ukraine’s separatist east since early past year.
He said external aggression had led to emergence of a new form of poverty, sudden or unexpected poverty, that affected 1.5 million internally displaced persons in Ukraine.
He also denied Russian Federation the right to speak about peoples’ freedom while “punishing its neighbor for its choice” and “respecting no one”. If that continues, he said, “then I will argue for lifting the sanctions“.
“I hope both Kiev and Moscow are prepared to work toward this”.
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In a scathing denunciation, Poroshenko accused Moscow of “misleading” the world about its role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, where it claims to have no military involvement.
