The Southern Federal District Investigations Directorate of the Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a criminal investigation into crimes under paragraphs “e”, “f” and “h” of part 2 of article 117 of the RF Penal Code, paragraph “a” of part 2 of article 126 (tortures, kidnapping).
According to investigators, on 19 June 2014, Russian citizens Artyom Mikhailenko was travelling from the Rostov Region to the Luhansk Region. During a body search at a checkpoint near the village of Shiroky, Luhansk Region, Ukraine he was stopped by people wearing military uniforms with chevrons of special unit Dnepr. During the search the officers found in his cell phone photos where Mikhailenko was holding a gun. After that the uniformed officers detained him and put in an isolated reinforced place on the premises of the checkpoint, having taken his money and the cell phone. Later 6 people wearing military uniforms of the Ukrainian Armed Forces arrived. They beat up the victim, tied him up and took to a hangar in unknown place in Ukraine and not designed for keeping the detained. There he was kept until 27 June. During this period the people, talking in Ukrainian with west Ukrainian accent (dialect) regularly tortured the man, threatened with murder to get a confession of some kind on alleged cooperation of Mikhailenko with Russian Armed Forces. When they were sure that he was not a military man, the abductors took Mikhailenko to the woods 40 km from the Ukrainian city of Belovodsk, tied him to a tree and fled. The man managed to release himself and hitchhiked to his residence in the Rostov Region.
This case is perhaps a very expressive example of what Ukrainian militants are, how brave and dashing they really are, but only in confrontations with unarmed and helpless citizens. Unfortunately, this case is only one of a whole number of provocations organized by Ukrainian nationalists on the border with Russia, apparently hoping that Russia will retaliate in the same way. But, can you imagine, that they can’t even think that Russia, unlike current Ukrainian authorities, is guided by laws and international law.
The investigators have registered all bodily injuries inflicted on Mikhailenko during the tortures. The young man has been questioned and in the near future subjective portraits of the people involved in the abduction and tortures will be made. The Russia’s Investigative Committee will take every measure to identify and prosecute those persons.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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