Volker: We've heard nothing from Russia to indicate they're considering release of Ukrainian POW sailors

12:24, 27.07.2019 1 min read

Russia has not yet committed any actions that would indicate Moscow's readiness to release Ukrainian prisoners of war-seamen captured in the Kerch Strait area in November 2018, said Kurt Volker, the Special Representative of the U.S. State Department for Ukraine Negotiations, has said.

"On the sailors. Unfortunately, we've heard nothing from Russia to indicate they're considering their release," Volker said at a briefing in Kyiv on Saturday.

As reported, the UN International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on May 25, 2019, at the request of Ukraine, ordered Russia to immediately transfer the arrested sailors, as well as ships to their homeland.

As reported, on July17, Moscow's Lefortovsky District Court extended the arrests for three months of 24 Ukrainian sailors detained following the incident near the Kerch Strait in the fall of 2018