This latest information on the arrest of a large group of young leftists in Ukraine
came via e-mail from the city of Odessa on 3 January and was originally published in left newspaper Moskva. Sadovoe kol’tso. 

The police arrested twelve people.  They are:
Russian citizens
Igor Danilov,
Anatoly Plevo
Ilya Romanov
Alexander Smirnov

Ukrainian citizens

Oleg Alekseev
Sergei Beldiugin
Nina Polskikh
Andrei Yakovenko
Alexander Gerasimov
Denisov
B. Zinchenko
And one citizen of Moldova
E. Semyonov

(According to one earlier report, the arrested Ukrainians come from the Leninist Communist Union of Youth (Ukraine) (LKSMU), the All-Ukrainian Union of Workers (VSR) and the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU).  Andrei Yakovenko—the First Secretary of the Odessa Leninist-Communist Youth League and the regional leader of VSR – was charged according to Article 258 (4) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine for “organizing a stable secret terrorist group for the purpose of a violent overthrow of the constitutional order of Ukraine and the seizure of state power.” -  A.B.)

This is list is not complete and might be in need of revision.  At this time there is no
Opportunity to establish exact names and patronymics of some prisoners.

The following picture emerges from the accounts of the arrested and their relatives 

 Beginning last August the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU, former KGB) of the city of Nikolaev began the surveillance of young activists from left organizations and the Young Communist League in the cities of Odessa and Nikolaev.  The surveillance was conducted almost openly.

The arrests began around December 13.  However, formally they were registered later, in case of the Russian citizen Alexander Smirnov only on December 23.  The key event became the night storming of the apartment in Nikolaev.  In the wee hours of the night a special unit, belonging either to the police or the state security, detonated the door to the rental apartment where at that time were staying Igor Danilov, Nina Polskikh, Oleg Alekseev, and Sergei Beldiugin.  Awakened by the violent assault, Danilov opened fire at the assailants from his revolver and might have wounded some of them. 

Next came the arrests of left activists in Odessa and a series of searches in Odessa, Nikolaev, Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk.  There is some evidence of the searches in Kharkov and some other cities.  Special units arrested people on the street without providing court orders.  Any reflexive reaction to these sudden arrests  were qualified as “resisting law enforcement.”

 The state security organized gigantic searches.  Thus, the search in Yakovenko’s apartment was conducted by up to twenty five security service agents at a time.   Even the mine-detecting equipment was used.  But according to the information we have, except in the stormed apartment in Nikolaev no weapons were found.  During the searches the state security seized Russian press. 

While the operation was designed and prepared by the SBU, the arrested have been placed to the basements of the local police precincts.

Since the searches did not provide the state security with desirable results the period between the apprehensions and the formal arrests of the young communists (hence the right of the arrested to consult a lawyer) was used for tortures in order to get from them “confessions” in “terrorist” activities.  The extreme brutality of these tortures is evident from what we have been able to learn about the condition of the arrested.  Thus Oleg Alekseev has lost one eye (from the words of his lawyer), and the young Yakovenko had a heart attack.  Danilov was tortured so brutally that there are doubts that he is still alive.  After they had been subjected to tortures some of the arrested  could not even sign their own “confessions” in “terrorist” activities.  Their relatives were denied seeing the arrested.  Tortures continue.

The Russian Consulate in Odessa--in the person of the Consul-Councilor Vladimir Antipenko--refused to accept the statement from the relatives of the arrested and to send a consulate representative to be present at the interrogations of the arrested Russian citizens.  The later is the legal responsibility of the Consulate.  Said Antipenko: “If they got arrested it means they deserve it.”  The lawyers of the arrested ask to disseminate the information about this affair in mass media (the bourgeois press both in Ukraine and Russia observe complete silence about it) in order to stop the tortures of the arrested young men.

According to sources close to SBU, the main objective of this operation is to prove to President Kuchma the existence of terrorist organizations in Ukraine, the usefulness and effectiveness of SBU and its “Anti-terrorist Department,” created several years ago to fight terrorism and the attempts to change the state order of Ukraine.  The state security apparatus who designed and executed this operation hopes to prevent the further reduction of its budget in the conditions of the deep economic crisis in Ukraine. 

Alexander Sivov
Odessa-Nikolaev

Translated by Anton Baumgarten
 
 

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