Statement of Daria Morozova concerning cases of kidnapping Donbass women

Comments and statements of the Ombudsman Detention News

Staff of Security Service of Ukraine kidnap Donbass women

Staff of the Security Service of Ukraine began to kidnap women from Donbass, who are irrelevant to the conflict in the region. They always use the same repressive methods. They kidnap women, and then torture them, so defenceless women are ready to do and to say anything. I want to note that the special services of Ukraine ignore requests from relatives and friends until they get confession from the detainees. At present, the SSU keeps about 40 women on charges of committing non-existent crimes.

Daria Mastikasheva is one of the detainees. She was kidnapped and tortured for 24 hours. Then the girl confessed of committing crimes that she did not commit. This was videotaped. On the video presented by SSU chairman Vasily Gritsak, Mastikasheva’s face was obscured for an unknown reason. Perhaps, this was done to conceal the fact of physical coercion. As a result, security officials want to clear their names and try to “confine” a girl in a specialized psychiatric institution with no legal grounds.

A little later, the officers of the Security Service of Ukraine detained Yulia Prosolova. The girl headed to Mariupol and went missing. Ten days after she disappeared, Vasily Hrytsak showed a video at the briefing.  There was a frightened and tormented woman taking the blame for a crime she had no relation to. At the moment her whereabouts are unknown.

I also wish to recall the plight of Nadezhda Kozlova, who is currently kept in a penitentiary institution with a baby. The girl tried to defend her honour from encroachments by members of Ukrainian volunteer battalions, and, acting in self-defense, she pulled out a grenade from one of them. However, the Ukrainian authorities claim that Kozlova threatened a grenade to all people nearby, and demanded that the men “give her a lift to the city centre.”

Olga Agranovich is one of those innocent women detained by the special services of Ukraine. She worked as a doctor-obstetrician and she doesn’t have anything to do with the conflict in Donbass. Nevertheless, the woman was also arbitrary arrested by SSU for unknown reasons.

Each time, the charges against people detained in Ukraine are becoming more absurd. This issue will necessarily be on the agenda of the next meeting of the humanitarian subgroup in Minsk.