Russia is fabricating evidence in the cases of convicted Ukrainian prisoners of war in order to increase the “value” of prisoner exchanges.
Andrii Pasternak, head of the Joint Center under the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), spoke about this during a presentation of the project “Made in Russia. Taken Captive,” according to a Ukrinform correspondent.
"As for the convicts from ‘Azov,’ 'Aidar,‘ and 'Dnipro,’ many of them are marines and border guards. We all know how the Russian Federation rigs the judicial process: they set the task of fabricating a story, using coercion and torture, so that our boys or girls give false testimony, and they document it. There are even cases where colleagues from intelligence and the Security Service of Ukraine are being tried. We have numerous cases where a person is being tried, for example, for actions in the Mariupol area, but they have never even been there; they were defending the Kharkiv region and have absolutely no connection to this. This is blatant fabrication, made-up stories," Pasternak said.
According to him, this practice significantly impacts the process of returning prisoners of war.
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