🔴Live: Zelensky enrages Russia by bringing home Azovstal commanders from Turkey

1:08am: Zelensky brings home Azovstal commanders from Turkey, enrages Russia

President Volodymyr Zelensky brought home from Turkey on Saturday five former commanders of Ukraine’s garrison in Mariupol, a highly symbolic achievement that Russia said violated a prisoner exchange deal engineered last year.

Russia immediately denounced the release. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ankara had promised under the exchange agreement to keep the men in Turkey and complained Moscow had not been informed.

The five commanders have been lionised in Ukraine after leading a fierce three-month defence of Mariupol from the Azovstal steel plant last year, the biggest city Russia has captured.

“We are returning home from Turkey and bringing our heroes home,” said Zelenskiy, who met Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Istanbul on Friday.

• Key developments from Saturday, July 8:

Ukraine’s Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov welcomed a US decision to send cluster bombs to Kyiv Saturday, saying it would help to liberate Ukrainian territory but promised the munitions would not be used in Russia.

Mercenary fighters of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner group were preparing to move to Belarus Saturday under the terms of a deal that defused their mutiny against Russia’s military leadership, a senior commander of the group was quoted as saying.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday visited a tiny Black Sea island whose few defenders famously defied a Russian warship at the beginning of the invasion, as the conflict reaches its 500th day.

Read yesterday’s live blog to see how all the day’s events unfolded.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)