Russian intelligence (FSB, ex-KGB) has called for the arrest of two Ukrainian ministers, a Moscow court told AFP on Tuesday, the two officials being accused, according to Russian media, of having violated the integrity territory of Russia.
“FSB investigators have requested … to order in absentia the arrest of the Minister for the Reintegration of Territories not under the control of Ukraine, Irina Vereshchuk, and the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs” Emine Djaparova, said the Lefortovo court in Moscow.
This request for arrest in absentia has above all a symbolic dimension.
The court would not specify the reason given by the Russian security services, but according to the state news agency Tass, the two ministers are accused of violating the territorial integrity of Russia.
Moscow annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014, then claimed in September 2022 the annexation of four other regions of Ukraine that it does not fully control.
Ukrainian officials, despite the fighting, are moving across Ukraine, including the four regions that Moscow has claimed since late September.
Ms. Verchchuk, for example, recently visited Kherson, capital of the eponymous southern region that Ukrainian forces took over in November, inflicting a new setback on Russia.
Mrs Djaparova is a Crimean Tatar, and as such promotes as number two of Ukrainian diplomacy the end of the Russian occupation of this Ukrainian peninsula.
The international community has overwhelmingly rejected Russian claims, denounced its offensive against Ukraine, and even Moscow’s allies are calling for respect for Ukrainian territorial integrity.