Few days ago we published the story of Oleksandr Fedorenko, a Ukrainian ex-prisoner who was illegally taken by russia from the temporarily occupied territory of the Kherson region, Ukraine
Personal participation + knowledge of laws + help of specialists
▪️We sincerely consider this a success story where all the components of the formula worked.
▪️But we honestly talk about cases in which the prospect of putting an end is still unclear, despite all the efforts made.
14 Ukrainian prisoners after being denied legal border crossing with Latvia, were expelled from the country by special military forces. The guys were again placed in the Volgograd Center for the Detention of Foreign Citizens (CDFC), russia.
Earlier we wrote about this case and the stigmatizing, incompetent reportage of the Latvian media:
https://www.facebook.com/UnModeCommunityMovement/posts/pfbid0mxbcHzzPfNxQeqqpuaYYYY8tGe9B3iEZwrsczKMVkd7ypb8yzXgEEvyh7r2J1m9xl
“This, of course, is a big failure of the Latvian services helping Ukraine and a negative example for other countries declaring assistance to Ukraine. It is unacceptable, except on the basis of a court decision, to arbitrarily divide people into "criminals" and "non-criminals". Specifically, these 14 people have served the terms of punishment assigned to them by the Ukrainian court and are not considered criminals. But this is how the Latvian media called them and announced an allegedly illegal attempt to enter the country. Some of these people had Ukrainian passports, the rest had a package of accompanying documents sufficient to cross the border. All of these 14 people are citizens of Ukraine and have the right to legally enter Latvia,” says an UnMode representative.
▪️In Volgograd, (Russia) we managed to involve a lawyer in the process. He met with one of the Ukrainians who had previously been expelled from Latvia - Andrey (note the name has been changed) in the Volgograd CDFC. The lawyer got acquainted with the documents, drafted and filed an appeal against the decision of the Russian court to place Andrey in the CDFC.
▪️The appeal hearing on the appeal against expulsion from Russia and placement in the CDFC will take place on Friday, February 10th. Andrei is currently receiving medical care in a specialized hospital, but he cannot yet receive comprehensive treatment (note foreign citizens in the Russian Federation are only entitled to urgent medical care at the expense of the state)
Also, a representative of the FMS in the Volgograd region met with Andrey and the guys and announced some plans for their future fate. Now we can not talk about it yet, just hoping for better.
“The system of international and domestic russian assistance to Ukrainian citizens for such a category of people as former prisoners turned out to be inoperative. For example, in russia there is no clear system and common understanding of what to do with prisoners from Ukraine after their release. We can see that CDFC is not a working and not a humane option. In most regions of russia, there is no clear mechanism for interaction to support Ukrainian citizens who have been released from prisons after the end of their sentence. The situation may be handled differently locally. For example, in the krasnodar Territory and the samara region, there is a practice of releasing Ukrainian citizens through the courts,” comments an UnMode representative.
P.S The photo shows a small parcel that we handed over to the Ukrainians. Behind the scenes is the work of caring people, volunteers, representatives of the diaspora, specialists and human rights activists from different countries.
We thank everyone who made even a little effort so that the situation with the Ukrainian prisoners illegally taken to the territory of russia would come closer to a solution or more people would know about it.