The gunman is currently being held in a temporary detention center, police reported.
The president later deleted the short video from his account.
The SBU security service classed the incident as an “act of terror” and “hostage-taking” and Kryvosh could face up to 15 years in prison.
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) July 21, 2020
Some Ukrainians criticized Zelensky for the move, which many compared to an episode of the popular British television series “Black Mirror” where a British prime minister fulfills the grotesque demands of a kidnapper holding a member of the British royal family.
Natalia Delgyado, a Kiev-based Facebook user, wondered “whether Zelensky would have fulfilled the terrorist’s demands if he had demanded public sex with a pig like in the plot of the Black Mirror episode.”
“This is a mistake. We should not negotiate with terrorists,” Kiev-based lawyer Igor Pashnev wrote on Facebook.
But another Facebook user, Eduard Runin, from Kharkiv, praised Zelensky for choosing the option of “fulfilling the demands of a terrorist and keeping people alive.”