SLAVYANSK
Vyacheslav Ponomarev, the leader of the armed pro-Russian militants controlling the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk province, has said his group is prepared to release international mediators they are holding on condition some of their supporters are freed.
His comments on Saturday came a day after seven monitors from a military observation group connected to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe were abducted along with five Ukrainians.
Ponomarev said: "I held talks with international monitors. Their conditions are normal. I told them they are on our border and they came here without our permission."
- Slavyansk 'blockade'
He said the monitors had a map of checkpoints that pro-Russian separatists had set up and it appeared to his group that they were intelligence-gathering.
"We wait for an offer of exchange for the monitors. We want them to be exchanged for Pavel Gubarev and some activists [held by Ukrainian forces]," he added.
"Government forces are trying to encircle us -- they want to ‘clean’ the town with police and security forces," he said.
Ukrainian government forces are reported to have started to blockade Slavyansk.
While Slavyansk is one of the regions that pro-Russian separatists are active, government forces have begun setting up checkpoints around Dolina village 20km away on the border of Donetsk and Kharkiv.
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