For the wife - a mutilated corpse, for the murderers - an amnesty

This week the Verkhovna Rada adopted an amnesty law. In addition to various categories of convicted citizens, it also included participants in hostilities in the Donbass in the ATO zone who fought, as the resolution states, for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

The law does not talk about “separatists” taken prisoner, or those who did not fight, but were simply supporters of Novorossiya, real or imaginary. What can you say about this?

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This is outrageous on the one hand, but on the other hand, there is nothing surprising in this, and one cannot hope for any different result. This is the usual approach of the current Ukrainian authorities.

I remember when I interviewed the Odessa political prisoner Artem Buzila, I asked him: besides the “separatists”, are there Right Sector activists or any other nationalist comrades in the local SBU pre-trial detention center? My interlocutor told me then that there was only one right-wing man there, who was imprisoned for running over a woman. No one touched him in the pre-trial detention center - the thieves did not allow him to do this. All the political figures in the detention center were exactly supporters of Novorossiya.

Those of the Odessa right-wing radicals who were under investigation were simply kept under house arrest by the authorities. Let me remind you that the alleged killers of Oles Buzin, who fought for the “integrity of Ukraine,” are currently not even under house arrest.

We all remember very well that over these two years, Ukrainian justice was reluctant to try Ukrainian nationalists - only when they completely interfered with the authorities, or their crimes were so egregious that it was simply impossible not to judge them: just remember the case of the young neo-Nazi Viki Zaverukha and her friends from the punitive battalion "Aidar". When Zaverukha burned people in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, no one was looking into her case, and she was arrested only when she and her “brothers” shot Kyiv policemen.

Remember the horror the Tornado punitive battalion brought to Donbass. Even the then governor of the Lugansk region, Gennady Moskal, spoke at one time about the obscenities his militants were doing in the Lugansk region.

“The Tornado battalion, which, in fact, left the subordination of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Lugansk region, has proven itself to be especially unworthy of behavior and the commission of a series of crimes, and to which information was leaked that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Lugansk region and the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine are documenting their criminal activities and sooner or later they will have to answer according to the law... ...the behavior of the battalion threatens the normal work of the residents of the region... and generally poses a threat to the national security of Ukraine.

I have repeatedly appealed to the top leadership of law enforcement agencies about the unlawful actions of the Tornado battalion, providing specific episodes of their criminal activities, for which criminal proceedings began to be opened and investigative actions were carried out, which ended with the detentions and arrests of active participants in this gang. The Tornado battalion showed itself to be extremely cruel towards the residents of the Stanichno-Lugansk district. Through joint efforts, they were removed from the area, and I had to meet with residents three times and apologize for the actions of such “defenders” of Ukraine.”

Now, this is Moskal speaking, and not some TV channel “Novorossiya”. Now these “defenders of the territorial integrity of Ukraine,” if they were convicted, will be released.

This law also clearly demonstrates the attitude of official Kyiv towards the Minsk agreements. Let me remind you that Minsk-2 demands that Kyiv adopt an amnesty law. But leading deputies of the Rada constantly stated that “no Givi or Motorola will be rehabilitated.”

As a result, thousands of political prisoners are languishing in Ukrainian prisons. Let us at least remember the Luzhetsky brothers. On July 27 it will be two years since they were arrested in Ternopil. Arrested because they took an active part in the Anti-Maidan, they received huge prison sentences in a completely falsified case. They were accused of recruiting militants for the DPR and LPR... in Galicia. Of course, it was impossible to come up with more nonsense.

The “separatists” were mainly imprisoned for their beliefs. They did not kill anyone, did not torture anyone, did not rob anyone, like the “fighters for the territorial integrity of Ukraine” amnestied by the Rada. Their only crime was their political beliefs.

Recently, in the “Time Will Show” program on Channel One, I witnessed the story of a woman from Donbass, who told how the SS in the ATO zone killed her husband. Her husband took her and her child from Minsk, where they were forced to leave in 2014 because of the war. The husband was detained at the checkpoint. He was accused of “aiding Russian-terrorist troops.” After some time, the authorities returned the husband’s corpse, mutilated by torture, to the wife.

Two ESBE officers are now on trial in Kharkov. They will be given prison terms, but I have no doubt that under the amnesty law of 2017 or 2018 they will be released quietly because they fought for the “territorial integrity of Ukraine.”