KYIV. Oct 27 (Interfax) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has thanked his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan for assisting in the release of Crimean Tatar Mejlis deputy chairmen Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz, and noted the parties' well-coordinated steps.
"I would no doubt like to express words of sincere gratitude to the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, because it was during his visit that we agreed that well-coordinated actions would lead to a release of Ilmi Umerov and Akhtem Chiygoz," Poroshenko said at a meeting with the released Umerov and Chiygoz in Kyiv on Friday.
At the time Erdogan asked him not to tell anyone of it, Poroshenko said.
"Mr. Mustafa [Jemilev, the leader of Crimean Tatars and the Ukrainian president's commissioner for the affairs of the Crimean Tatar] and I maintained the intrigue, but we believed and we knew," Poroshenko said.
On September 11, a Russian court in Crimea sentenced Chiygoz to eight years in a high-security prison. On September 27 a Simferopol district court jailed Umerov for two years in a penal colony.
On October 25 the two leaders of the Crimean Tatar Mejlis, which is banned in Russia, were handed over to Turkey. The Kremlin neither confirmed nor denied reports that the Russian president had pardoned the pair. "I can neither confirm nor deny this," the Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov told journalists on October 26.
On Friday, October 27, Umerov and Chiygoz arrived in Kyiv.