The two alleged Russian special forces soldiers captured in eastern Ukraine on Sunday will be prosecuted for "terrorist crimes" committed during a special ops mission that killed a government soldier, Ukraine's State Security Service chief said Monday.
A YouTube video posted by the Ukrainian interior ministry shows one of the two wounded Russians, who identified himself as Alexander Alexandrov, admitting he was part of a 14-member special forces team deployed on a sabotage and reconnaissance mission in Ukraine from the Russian town of Togliatti, Reuters reported.
"We were discovered," Alexandrov told the interrogator. "I was wounded in the leg as I tried to get away."
The two men could reportedly face life sentences in prison if found guilty of the terrorism charges. Journalists will be allowed to speak with the men in Kiev later on Monday, according to the defense ministry, reports the Guardian.
According to Andriy Lysenko, a spokesman for Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation," the men were captured in Shchastya, a government-controlled town near the rebel-held city of Luhansk, on May 17.
Russia has denied that it is providing weapons and soldiers to the separatist movement fighting against the Ukrainian government, but the men's capture could finally force Moscow to admit its involvement, as much of the world has long suspected.
"The leadership of the Russian Federation will have difficulty saying that these guys just got lost," said Col. Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council. Lysenko was alluding to the 10 Russian paratroopers captured in eastern Ukraine last summer. Putin said they must have accidentally crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border and ended up exchanging 63 Ukrainian soldiers who had crossed into Russia to flee the fighting.
Following the capture of the two alleged Russian soldiers on Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted once again that Moscow is not involved in the region.
"We have repeatedly said, and the defense ministry has too, that there are no Russian troops in Donbas," he said, referring to the area in eastern Ukraine where much of the fighting has occurred, according to the Guardian.
However, Moscow does admit that a number of Russian nationals are fighting with the separatists, according to the BBC.
Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Major General Igor Konashenkov was later quoted by TASS news agency as saying that the two prisoners had previously served in the Russian armed forces but were no long Russian soldiers on the day they were captured.
"We have checked the Ukrainian side's information. Indeed, these guys had really served in one of the units of Russia's military forces," he said, reported Reuters.
The Minsk ceasefire accord reached in February has slowed fighting and the rate of casualties, but both sides continue to violate the agreement almost daily.
