Kyiv: Despite a prisoner exchange last year, wherein the men were supposed to remain in Turkiye, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky returned from a trip to Turkiye on Saturday, bringing home five former commanders of Ukraine's garrison in Mariupol.

Russia immediately condemned the men's release. Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, claimed Turkiye had broken the terms of the prisoner exchange but had not notified Moscow.

The commanders, who are revered as heroes in Ukraine, oversaw the port's defence last year as Russia's largest city captured during its invasion.
Russian forces destroyed Mariupol during a three-month siege, killing thousands of civilians inside the city.

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The Azovstal steel plant's Ukrainian defenders held out in tunnels and bunkers there until Kyiv finally gave the order to surrender in May of last year.

In a prisoner swap arranged by Ankara in September, Moscow released some of them in exchange for the commanders staying in Turkiye until the war was over.

Zelensky met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Istanbul on Friday. "We are returning from Turkiye and bringing our heroes home," Zelensky said.

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Denys Prokopenko, Svyatoslav Palamar, Serhiy Volynsky, Oleh Khomenko, and Denys Shleha are Ukrainian soldiers. Finally, they'll be with their family, he wrote on the Telegram messaging service.

"No one told us about this," Peskov said to the Russian news agency RIA. The agreements stated that these ringleaders were to stay in Turkiye until the conflict was over.

The release, according to Peskov, was the result of intense pressure from Turkey's NATO allies in the lead-up to the military alliance's summit, which will take place next week and at which Ukraine hopes to learn its membership status.

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Zelensky made no mention of the reason the commanders were now being permitted to go home in his remarks. A request for comment was not immediately answered by Turkiye's Directorate of Communications.

Before the two commanders boarded a Czech aeroplane together, Zelensky posted a one-minute video of himself and other officials shaking hands with and hugging the grinning officers.

On social media, many Ukrainians praised the news. Finally! ever, the best news. Congratulations to our brothers!" According to Major Maksym Zhorin, who is currently engaged in combat in eastern Ukraine,