Two years since the Russian troops stormed into Ukraine's territories, Moscow has added Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to its list of wanted criminals. According to the state news agency TASS, the Russian Interior Ministry database showed Zelenskyy's name on a wanted list.
The Ukrainian President's name appeared on the wanted list "under an article of the Criminal Code" with a pre-war photo of his. Though his data was given, there is no other detail. There was no immediate comment from Russian officials as to why Zelenskyy had been added to the list.
However, Ukraine's foreign ministry has responded to this, calling it a worthless Russian announcement. A statement issued by the ministry said Russian President Vladimir Putin was himself subject to arrest under an International Criminal Court warrant.
"We would like to remind you that unlike the worthless Russian announcements, an International Criminal Court warrant for the arrest of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin on suspicion of war crimes is quite real, and subject to implementation in 123 countries," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
It said the Russian announcement was "evidence of the desperation of the Russian state machine and propaganda, which can think of no other way to attract attention".
Commander of Ukraine's Land Forces, Oleksandr Pavliuk, and former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko have also appeared in the online database on Saturday.
Zelenskyy is not the first foreign politican to be placed under the wanted list. In February, Moscow said it placed Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas under the list for the "desecration of historical memory" over the Baltic country's move to destroy Soviet era monuments. Besides Kallas, Lithuania's culture minister and members of the previous Latvian parliament are on a wanted list for destroying Soviet-era monuments. Russia also issued an arrest warrant for the International Criminal Court prosecutor who last year prepared Putin's war crimes warrant.
Russian missiles pound Ukraine
Russia continued to attack Ukrainian cities of Kharkiv and Dnipro regions and the Black Sea port city of Odesa on Saturday. Zelenskyy said Russia used eight missiles of various kinds and nearly 70 guided aerial bombs
against communities and frontline positions during the day. He also claimed that Ukraine's air force downed 13 Shahed drones that targeted the Kharkiv and Dnipro regions overnight. The President added that Ukraine's 110th mechanised brigade brought down a Russian Su-25 fighter-bomber over the eastern Donetsk region, one of four areas of Ukraine Moscow says it has annexed.
