Kyiv: Mayor Melitopol South Ukraine was kidnapped on Friday by the Russian army who occupied the city, President Volodymyr Zelensky said and Ukrainian officials.
“A group of 10 invaders kidnapped the Mayor of Melitopol Ivan Fedorov,” said the Ukrainian parliament on Twitter.
“He refused to work with the enemy,” he added.
The Mayor said was confiscated when he was at City Crisis Center dealing with supply issues.
In a video message Friday night, Zelensky confirmed kidnapping, calling Fedorov “a mayor who dared to defend Ukraine and members of his community”.
“This is clearly a sign of the weakness of the invaders … they have moved to a new stage of terror where they tried to physically eliminate representatives from legitimate Ukrainian local authorities,” he said.
“The capture of the Mayor of Melwalopol is therefore a crime, not only to certain people, to certain communities, and not only against Ukraine. This is a crime against democracy itself … The acts of Russian invaders will be considered like terrorists of the Islamic State,” he said .
Deputy Head of Administration of the President of Ukraine, Kirillo Timoshenko, who was previously posted a video in the telegram which showed the army who came out of a building that held a man dressed in black, his head covered with a black bag.
According to the Ukrainian parliament, another regional official, Deputy Head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Council – 120 kilometers (75 miles) North Melitopol – was kidnapped and then released a few days ago.
Before the Russian invasion, the melitopol has more than 150,000 people.