Putin urged the Russian Foreign Ministry to do everything for the release of a Russian from Hamas captivity

Russian President Vladimir Putin has asked the Russian Foreign Ministry to do everything possible to ensure that Russian Alexander Trufanov, who remains a hostage of the Palestinian Hamas movement, is set free. He said this at a meeting with members of the Russian Security Council on Monday, January 20.

The Russian leader addressed the head of the diplomatic department Sergey Lavrov on the situation in the Middle East region.

"You mentioned the Middle East. Now indeed there has been an exchange there, and some hostages have been released, but among the remaining hostages there is another person with dual citizenship - with Russian citizenship. I would ask you, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other colleagues in other departments, to work on this issue, not to forget about it and do everything to ensure that our citizen is at liberty," Putin said.

For his part, Lavrov said Moscow was working on Trufanov's release as part of a deal between Hamas and Israel. The minister also pointed out that the current situation in the region is far from convincing that stability has been achieved.

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Earlier in the day, Russian Ambassador to Israel Anatoly Viktorov expressed hope for Trufanov's imminent release. Viktorov met with the mother of Russian captive Trufanov in December 2024. At that time, he said that the Russian side was taking all actions to release all hostages from the Gaza Strip.

The ceasefire regime in the Gaza Strip began to operate in the morning of January 19. At the same time, Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages - Romy Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher - to representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The next day, Israel released the first 90 Palestinian prisoners as part of the deal.

On November 15, 2024, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova recalled that more than 100 people now remain in the captivity of the Palestinian movement and Trufanov is among them. She emphasized that capturing and holding people who are not guilty of anything for a long time cannot be justified in any way.

The situation in the Middle East escalated on the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas subjected the territory of Israel to a massive rocket attack from the Gaza Strip. On the same day, Israel began retaliatory strikes.