SLAVYANSK (Ukraine): Pro-Russia militants in Ukraine presented a captured team of international observers as “prisoners of war” on Sunday, raising the stakes in the crisis as US President Barack Obama warned Moscow against “provocation”.

The self-styled mayor of rebel-held Slavyansk, which has become the epicentre of the crisis, led eight European members of an OSCE military inspection mission before scores of local and foreign journalists in the town hall.

With four armed rebels watching over him, a spokesman for the group, German officer Axel Schneider, said the team was in good health and stressed they were “OSCE officers with diplomatic status”. “I cannot go home of my own free will,” he told reporters.

One of the OSCE men, a Swede, was later released as he suffers from diabetes, a rebel spokeswoman said.

The Vienna headquarters of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe confirmed the release and said “the efforts in the OSCE towards the release of all the other detained military inspectors and accompanying persons are going to be continued”.

The local rebel leader, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, earlier told reporters: “In our town, where a war situation is going on, any military personnel who don’t have our permission are considered prisoners of war.”—AFP