According to the ministry, a deputy from Russia’s foreign affairs team met with a high-ranking Hamas official in Moscow and pressed the group to honor its “promises” to free two Israeli hostages.
Mikhail Bogdanov, who also serves as President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy for the Middle East, held discussions with Moussa Abu Marzuk, a senior figure within Hamas’s political bureau.
Russian officials have demanded the release of Alexander “Sasha” Trufanov—a dual citizen of Russia and Israel—as well as Maxim Herkin, an Israeli from Ukraine’s Donbas region with Russian family ties.
During the meeting, Bogdanov “again placed particular stress on the necessity of carrying out the promises given by Hamas’s leadership on releasing from imprisonment Russian citizen Trufanov and other hostages,” according to the ministry.
On October 7, 2023, Trufanov and his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, were abducted from their home at Kibbutz Nir Oz near the Gaza border. In the ensuing violent Hamas attack, his father was killed, and his mother and grandmother were taken and later released in November 2023. His family had moved from Russia to Israel in the late 1990s.
Herkin, who had immigrated to Israel from Ukraine with his mother, was kidnapped from the Supernova rave music festival on October 7, 2023.
Earlier today, Abu Marzuk informed Russia’s RIA Novosti that Trufanov would “definitely be released in the near future… in the first stage of the deal,” while discussions regarding the release of Herkin were planned for a “second stage.”
The ministry added that their talks also covered “the progress of the ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip, with the stress on the importance of increasing humanitarian aid to the suffering Palestinian population.”
{Matzav.com}
Alexander “Sasha” Trufanov’s mother, Yelena, started keeping Shabbos several months ago, both as a zechus for him and also for herself.
May Hashem protect him and release him quickly and easily.
We have friends/comrades in the kremlin. Ty Borat