100 days of arrest of journalist Artyom Buzila

Vsevolod Nepogodin, writer, Odessa

6 of August - exactly one hundred days, as the Odessa journalist, the editor-in-chief of the portal “For Real”, Artyom Buzil, was detained.

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A twenty-five-year-old postgraduate political scientist living with her mother in an ordinary “Khrushchev”, was detained by 126 (!!!) heavily armed Alpha special forces officers.

They broke into 6 in the morning, smashed the whole apartment, put it on the ears of neighbors. First, he was thrown into a pre-trial detention center for two months; at the end of June, the court extended Artyom's detention for a similar period.

Why did the modest bespectacled man, a regular at intellectual forums and round tables, become so dangerous to the Ukrainian authorities?

The fact is that Buzila organized the first congress of the “People's Rada of Bessarabia”. Gathered social activists from all the towns of the restless region of winemakers. In Bessarabia there are villages of Gagauz, Bulgarians, Moldavians, and Gypsies. All these ethnic groups are pro-Russian and, of course, their consolidation in the fight for their legitimate rights is extremely inconvenient for official Kyiv.

Artyom telephoned the leaders of all communities in Bessarabia and invited them to meet to speak as a united front against the policies of the current government. For this he is charged with the article “Encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of the state.”

Buzila faces a minimum of five years in prison. Artyom did not throw Molotov cocktails at the Berkut fighters and did not bring shells to the Ukrainian Armed Forces mortars shelling Donetsk. Today in Ukraine people are thrown behind bars for public activities, but murderers of civilians are quietly at large.

Protests in support of Artyom have already taken place in many European capitals. The far-fetched nature of the accusations against him is clear to any sane person. There is no doubt that his case is fabricated and sewn with white thread. The investigation has no evidence, and therefore they are trying with all their might to extract the testimony the authorities need from Artyom.

Buzile shine a flashlight in the eyes, deprived of sleep. Artyom’s lawyer has repeatedly talked about the torture applied to his client, but the Ukrainian law enforcement system prefers not to respond to these allegations. The authorities are trying to imagine a harmless intellectual as a villain and a criminal who planned to separate Bessarabia from Ukraine.

Knowing Artyom personally, I can say that he never had anything like this in his mind. Buzila has always been a patriot of Ukraine, advocating for its prosperity and well-being. From the age of seventeen he worked as a correspondent for socio-political publications and participated in mass actions. He was considered one of the most promising young political experts in the country. And now he is forced to hang around in a pre-trial detention center only for disagreeing with the management methods of Poroshenko and his team.

The Maidan coup d'état resulted in unprecedented censorship in the press for Ukraine and the inability to publicly express dissatisfaction with the current government. Any opposition activist who dares to criticize the pro-American rulers can be thrown into prison at any time on false charges.

The case of Artyom Buzila is a clear example of this. I believe that Buzila should be immediately released from the pre-trial detention center and return to professional activities for the benefit of Ukraine. Poroshenko’s comrades encroached on freedom of speech and trampled all ethical standards regarding journalists.

Artem Buzila is Ukraine’s modern prisoner of conscience No. 1. And while he is behind bars, all the Maidan slogans about European values, human rights and democratic ideals will not be worth a penny.