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Prisoner swap with Ukraine may help solve crisis: Putin

Xinhua, May 25, 2016 Adjust font size:

Russia has swapped a Ukrainian female military pilot for its two alleged special service officials in the hope that it would help solve the Ukrainian crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.

"I want to express the hope that such decisions dictated primarily by considerations of humanity will reduce the conflict and confrontation in the well-known region and will help avoid unwanted losses," the Russian Rossiya 24 TV channel showed Putin as saying.

A plane carrying freed Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko has landed in Kiev, while another plane brought Russian citizens Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Alexander Alexandrov to Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in a statement.

The spokesman said Putin had signed an order pardoning Savchenko following a request by relatives of two Russian reporters killed in an attack that Savchenko was believed to be involved in.

In March, the 34-year-old female pilot was sentenced by a Russian court to 22 years in prison after being found guilty of complicity in killing two Russian journalists in 2014.

Savchenko, who is considered a national hero by many Ukrainians, has denied the charges, saying that she had been kidnapped in Ukraine and then handed over to Russian authorities.

Various leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, had appealed to the Kremlin to release Savchenko.

Yerofeyev and Alexandrov, detained in eastern Ukraine and accused of conducting terrorist activities, were sentenced to 14 years of imprisonment in 2014, but both of them pleaded not guilty. Endi