So who kidnapped Razvozzhaev?

The Interior Ministry of Ukraine has made quite a sensational announcement: Russian oppositionist Leonid Razvozzhaev was manhandled in Ukraine not by criminal elements but by the law-enforcement services of other states, which can be concluded from a video shown by Russian TV channels. “Clearly, it was not criminals. It is not a criminal matter, it is an instance of collaboration between the law-enforcement bodies, of which I know nothing,” the ministry’s spokesman Volodymyr Polishchuk told Interfax-Ukraine. If this is the case and the law-enforcement services of other countries held sway on our territory, where were their Ukrainian counterparts who are saying unanimously that they know nothing and are not implicated in the kidnapping? Foreign intelligence veteran Oleksandr Sharov commented earlier to The Day: “If this happened without the knowledge of Ukraine’s secret services, it is nothing but shame. What are we to think then about our security? Who is going to ensure it?”

Aleksei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of the Moscow Echo radio station, is also absolutely right to believe that the Ukrainian Border Security Force, which claims that Razvozzhaev passed the border control without any complaints, should produce a video that confirms this. “I know that Ukrainian border guards do everything under CCTV surveillance at check points. To put it roughly, if Leonid Razvozzhaev personally passed the control and produced his passport, where is the footage of this? For people… and the office of the [UN High] Commissioner for Refugees are accusing the Ukrainian secret service of being involved in the kidnapping,” Venediktov said in a Moscow Echo program. Our Russian colleague is also asking, quite to the point, some more questions: “We know that a number of countries have concluded agreements. We do not know whether Russia and Ukraine have signed one. Now, speaking of secret services’ activities on the territory of a state, does this mean that Ukrainian special services can similarly operate on the territory of Russia? Moreover, can a foreign secret service kidnap people in our country and send them to the country of origin? And, as long as this is not being explained, a criminal story immediately turns into a political one.”

Meanwhile, Razvozzhaev has told human rights activists the details of his abduction in Kyiv and transfer to Russia. The oppositionist’s story, published by Russia’s The New Times, says, among other things: “I just managed to see a minibus with a Ukrainian number plate standing by the entrance. There were four men next to it. They pushed me inside the minibus, put a tight black hat on my head so that I could see nothing, and bound up my feet and hands with a Scotch tape. There were four men or so with me in the minibus. I think they were Ukrainian, for they kept silent almost all the time. When we reached the border, I was taken to another minibus – door to door. I was kept indoors,” Razvozzhaev says. Then he said he had been intimidated, told that his children would be killed, and tortured into giving false evidence. Then he was taken to Moscow. It will be recalled that Moscow’s Basmanny Court ruled that he be arrested for two months.

As is known, US authorities have officially expressed their concern to Russia over the Razvozzhaev case and requested an inquiry to be made into the reports that the oppositionist was tortured to give evidence, the Russian publication Kommersant says. It will be recalled that the UN has already threatened to impose sanctions on Ukraine over the kidnapping of the Russian oppositionist.

Taking into account that the Razvozzhaev story occurred just a few days before the elections, it was “not in favor of the government,” as the Party of Regions faction leader Oleksandr Yefremov put in tactfully. But the abovementioned Aleksei Venediktov used a far tougher language on Moscow Echo: “This scandal is also dealing a blow to Yanukovych… This resembles the prison scandal in Georgia… The result is that the Russian Federation presented Yanukovych with a poisoned gift because only the laziest oppositionists in Ukraine are not saying: look, what is this? A foreign state behaves on our territory as if it were at home!” Incidentally, the Ukrainian opposition has reacted, albeit belatedly, to the kidnapping. Arsenii Yatseniuk, a United Opposition – Fatherland leader, announced that the united opposition would press in the newly-elected parliament for the establishment of an ad hoc commission to inquire into the kidnapping of the Russian oppositionist in Kyiv.