Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday called for "everything possible" to be done to free a hostage with Russian citizenship from the captivity of the Hamas terrorist group.
“There (in the Middle East) an exchange has now taken place and some of the hostages have been released, but among the rest there is one more person with dual citizenship, including Russian. I ask (…) to work on this issue and do everything possible to ensure that our citizen is released,” Putin said, addressing Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Security Council.
According to Russian media, This is Alexander Trufanov, who has dual citizenship, Russian and Israeli.
Trufanov's release was discussed during a recent telephone conversation between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and the Hamas leadership, according to official sources.
The president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Mirjana Spoljaric, On Monday, the United Nations called on Israel and Hamas to respect the conditions of the truce agreement so that there can be more hostage releases in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
The first phase of the agreement on a ceasefire and the release of hostages in Gaza came into effect on Sunday and, for the moment, has already made possible the release of three Israeli hostages and 90 Palestinian prisoners.
The ICRC was the agency responsible for transfer Israeli hostages from northern Gaza and Palestinian prisoners from Israel to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Agencies contributed to this Aurora article.