The 33-year-old mayor of the Ukrainian town of Melitopol was kidnapped by Russian forces in early March and held for five days. Now Ivan Fedorov is in France to bear witness to his town’s occupation by the Russians, and he says the soldiers who interrogated him knew nothing about the town or Ukraine. Fedorov appeared on French television channel BFM TV to describe what his town has been living through. The boyish-looking mayor said his town in the southern, Zaporizhzhia region woke up to war on Feb. 24, when missiles struck a military airport just a few hundred yards from some apartment buildings. He said Russian forces are becoming increasingly aggressive because their plans for a lightning war didn’t work out and his town’s resistance has made them angry. (…) On March 11 Russian forces put a black bag over Fedorov’s head and took him away From Melitopol’s crisis center, where he was working. The scene was caught on surveillance cameras. Fedorov says he was held in a prison cell without his phone and unable to contact his parents. He told BFM interviewer Bruce Toussaint that he could hear people screaming as they were tortured in other cells. Fedorov says he was interrogated by five Russian soldiers who were completely unprepared and knew nothing about Melitopol or Ukraine. (…) The mayor says he believes he was only released because his kidnapping was caught on camera and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for his liberation. Fedorov said 29 other elected officials are still being held by Russian forces
via npr: Ukraine mayor says Russian soldiers who kidnapped him knew nothing about his country