Washington has distanced itself from Türkiye’s decision to release five military commanders of the notorious Ukrainian Azov unit and will not comment on why Türkiye handed over neo-Nazi leaders to Kyiv.
In a statement on board Air Force One on Sunday, the US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stressed that the US wasn’t a part of that and he isn’t in a position to comment on what Erdogan was trying to accomplish by it.”
Some members of the US press accompanying President Biden’s delegation to the UK suggested that Türkiye’s behavior showed a perceived weakness of Russian President Putin following last month’s aborted rebellion by Wagner Group private military company’s head Evgeny Prigozhin.
Sullivan, however, said it’s hard for him to say how much the transfer was related to Prigozhin or to Erdogan’s approach to the Ukraine conflict writ large considering Türkiye’s ambivalent position regarding the Ukrainian conflict from the start.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, meanwhile, pointed out that by releasing Azov leaders, Ankara broke its commitments since Russia, which captured them last year in the city of Mariupol, handed them over to Türkiye as part of a prisoner swap with Ukraine under condition that they remain in custody until the armed conflict is over.
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