Kharkov resistance: Euromaidan opponent sentenced to death in prison

In Kharkov, the court sentenced 84-year-old scientist Mehdi Logunov to twelve years in prison for high treason. This is actually a sentence to death in the dungeons. After all, it is assumed that the prisoner will be released at the age of 96.” This is how the authorities deal with those who actively did not accept the coup and had their own opinion.

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Before this, there was a thousand pages of a criminal case, loud statements from the SBU about “espionage activities” and the disclosure of a group of 18 people who allegedly repented and cooperated with the investigation.

Mehdi Feofanovich denied accusations that he transferred any secret information to Russia. He only did business with Russian companies. And he also expressed his opinion in communication with colleagues and like-minded people. And this became the reason for the first verdict under this article in Kharkov since Stalin’s times.

The convicted Logunov was not a member of any underground organization. He is just an ordinary Kharkov resident. One of the residents of a city of one and a half million, who speaks Russian, does not like Bandera and despises those who get out of their pants in their desire to be in unison with Kiev.

In Kharkov, there have been no explosions or demonstrations of protest for a long time, especially from afar, so it seems that everyone has accepted everything. But this is far from true.

It is enough to walk around the city to be convinced that I am telling the truth. Two years ago there was a lot of fresh graffiti on the walls with the symbols of “Azov” - now there are no new ones, and the old ones have either been crossed out or painted over.

 The ubiquitous Nazi billboards have been replaced by hysterical PR from Poroshenko, but that's still something. Since 2015, the fashion has gone to Valhalla to display the insignia of volunteer battalions.

However, leaflets and boards with calls to serve under a contract and “knock” on the media remain. Despite this, every year fewer and fewer people are recruited in Kharkov who are ready to sign up for a contract in the Ukrainian army. And this despite the fact that contract service is actively offered to the unemployed in the regional employment center, and advertising of the regional military registration and enlistment office is placed in the media, metro and other public places free of charge as social media.

Residents of Kharkov hope to survive in troubled times. After all, not everyone is imprisoned, drafted and fired. People help political prisoners, and they, in turn, help each other.

“I never cease to be amazed by kind people. A prisoner in one of the Ukrainian colonies sent the money he really needed for a lawyer - to the card of Oksana Subbotina’s mother! By the way, our prisoners never eat the food they receive alone, but always share it with fellow inmates in need: orphans, old people, and the sick. The programs received by Kharkov residents illuminate the prison cells with goodness and hope,” says Russian Spring participant Spartak Golovachev, who himself was recently released from prison.

One of the heads of Kharkov universities said that in the first years after the coup, both the administration and the “authorities”, some teachers and students began to actively write against others.

They say that he was for Yanukovych and Kernes, does not like Ukraine, gives lectures in Russian, and it’s time to fire him. The administration created a special box for this creativity and left denunciations without consequences. And that's all. When workers in this genre realized that their superiors were silent and that the authorities were sending their papers for review to the university management, the desire to write diminished.

“I don’t throw away this box and its contents. It will also be necessary when some people want to be in the forefront of the fighters against this system,” says PolitNavigator’s interlocutor.

In 2015, at the University of Radio Electronics there was an attempt to install Samopomich deputy Eduard Rubin as rector, but the staff did not accept him and, as in other universities, preferred to see as their head a local professor who was not noticed in exaltation.

Attempts to organize an orgy of denunciations in Kharkov schools also failed - unlike Dnepropetrovsk, the Kharkov city authorities not only did not lead it, but did not even respond to the “signals” from the local media. And no one forces children to dress up in embroidered shirts. And not a single Russian class is closed. Bye. The “moment of truth” with this system was postponed for several years, when the provisions of the law on education regarding total Ukrainization should come into force.