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In an interview, Zelenskiy told Reuters he had proposed the
arrangement to the United Nations, which has suggested resuming
Russian ammonia across Ukraine to ease a global shortage of
fertiliser.
"I am against supplying ammonia from the Russian Federation
through our territory. I would only do it in exchange for our
prisoners. This is what I offered the UN," he said in an
interview at his presidential office.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the idea, TASS news
agency reported. "Are people and ammonia the same thing?" it
cited him as saying.
The United Nations has proposed that ammonia gas owned by
Russian fertiliser producer Uralchem be pumped by pipeline to
the Ukrainian border, where it would be bought by the U.S.-based
commodities trader Trammo.
The pipeline is designed to pump up to 2.5 million tonnes of
ammonia per year from Russia's Volga region to Ukraine's Black
Sea port of Pivdennyi, known as Yuzhny in Russian, near Odesa.
It was shut down after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine on
Feb. 24.
Zelenskiy said that hundreds of Russian troops had been captured
during Ukraine's lightning counteroffensive in northeast
Ukraine's Kharkiv region.
He said, however, that Russia was holding more Ukrainian
soldiers in custody than Ukraine had Russian POWs.
The fate of Ukrainian soldiers held by Russia, and in particular
those captured after holding out for months in the Azovstal
steelworks in the besieged city of Mariupol, is a highly
sensitive issue in Ukraine.
Some of their relatives were huddled on Friday outside the
government district in Kyiv where Zelenskiy's office is located,
holding signs saying "Bring the Azovstal Heroes Home".
(Reporting by Tom Balmforth; Editing by Gareth Jones and Grant
McCool)
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