Lviv is ready to stand surety for Oleh Panas
Over a hundred citizens have agreed to sign letters to that effect
A few days ago, police had 33-year-old Lviv Regional Hospital for the Disabled Persons and Victims of Repressions’ employee, freelance reporter of Vynnykivsky Visnyk newspaper Oleh Panas arrested in Lviv and taken to Kyiv. The order for his arrest was issued by Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv. Authorities instituted five criminal actions against Panas, one of them dealing with a breach of the peace in Kyiv, that is, the storming of the presidential administration building in Bankova Street.
Lviv mayor Andrii Sadovy invited to the city council’s great assembly hall on December 12 well-known, and most importantly, concerned about Panas’s fate Leopolitans: “We have got to be together in such a difficult time!” The purpose of the gathering was to take Panas on surety.
It should be noted that over a hundred citizens have agreed to sign letters to that effect, so the hall was filled to the brink. The signers included director general of the Zankovetska Theater Andrii Matsiak, director of the Lviv Philharmonic Society Volodymyr Syvokhip, director of the Art Gallery Larysa Voznytska, director of the Historical Museum Borys Chaikovsky, director of the Lviv Book Forum Oleksandra Koval, honorary consuls of Canada and the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine Olena Vinnytska and Bohdan Pankevych, faculty members of Franko University and the Lviv Polytechnic, chief editors of local publishing houses, boxer Andrii Kotelnyk, singers Volodymyr Yakymets of the Pikkardiiska Tertsia, Natalka Karpa, Nazar Savko, and Vladyslav Levytsky.
“Why am I here? It is very simple,” the Pikkardiiska Tertsia’s leader Yakymets explained to The Day his willingness to support Panas. “I am sure that the people who come to Euromaidan have pure thoughts, therefore, they cannot commit crimes. I saw it with my own eyes. Thus, I am ready to support every of them, not just Panas.”
“I have signed a letter of surety because I had been to Lviv’s Euromaidan, and my children had done the same thing in Kyiv,” the Lviv Polytechnic’s International Institute of Culture, Education and Relations with the Diaspora’s director Iryna Kliuchkovska stressed. “I believe these protesters have only pure thoughts.”
“I am ready to sign such letters of surety not only for Panas, but for all detainees and imprisoned citizens,” singer Solomia Chubai said, “because they all have been victims of illegal treatment.”
“I have signed a letter of surety primarily because I trust this city’s mayor,” the chief editor of Vydavnytstvo Staroho Leva Publishers Mariana Savka remarked. “Secondly, I saw pure and honest faces of young people standing in Independence Square, and I do not believe these people could commit an offense.”
