"Office": In the basements and zones of the LPR and the DPR, hundreds of people are prepared for possible exchange of prisoners

The exchange of prisoners in the Donbass, as a sensitive float, clearly demonstrates the state of the peace process. Now on this front there is nowhere worse. In Donetsk and Lugansk, hundreds of arrested “SBU spies” accumulated, that is, to some extent loyal to Ukraine, many of them were captured even before the quarantine began due to Covid-19. There are many among those arrested and “twitter” - the so -called bloggers who allowed criticism of the regime in social networks or simply hanging a picture of shelling with the geolocation on, according to which you can establish where the projectile flew. Usually, after the arrest, they spend one and a half to two years in a pre-trial detention center, after which they are awarded another 10 years in prison. Or more. Their main hope is the exchange for separatists arrested by Ukraine.

However, in the Minsk format, now there is no discussion of the lists of prisoners. Why? Officially, the position of representatives of the “individual regions of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions” is that there will be no exchanges until the complete legal cleaning of the separatists who had previously released by Ukraine. The fact is that some of the people who have "fallen under the exchange in past years have neither sentences nor decisions about pardon. Often, the Ukrainian authorities simply issued them, for example, under a personal obligation to appear in the court or for interrogation. These people probably now live somewhere in Russia or in the territory of the self-proclaimed republics, while in the Ukrainian wanted list.

“You don’t even need to wait for exchanges! [And] Do not wait for comments, we do not want to inspire unreasonable hopes for relatives - they come to us later! ” - A source from Donetsk, close to Minsk negotiations, told Novaya Gazeta.

However, in reality, everything is much more complicated than the “legal cleaning of the separatists”.

The brightest example of the crisis in negotiations on the exchange of prisoners was the winter attempt of Moscow to again introduce Viktor Medvedchuk to the negotiations of the main pro -Russian policy of Ukraine. In January, the heads of the “LPR” and “DPR”, as always in such cases, synchronously announced that they want to transfer the group of held persons to Ukraine - as a gesture of goodwill and unilaterally, but only “through the mediation of Viktor Medvedchuk”.

The reaction of Kyiv was decisive. An attempt to return Medvedchuk to the negotiation process in the office of the Ukrainian president was considered unacceptable - and primarily unacceptable for himself. The exchange declared by the self -proclaimed republics did not give an exchange. And on Medvedchuk himself, an avalanche of sanctions of the National Security and Defense Council immediately collapsed, and finally it came to the summer and to the races of treason.

As a result, a politician calling himself Kum Vladimir Putin will be under house arrest in Kyiv at least until September 7th. The last time the court extended his arrest on July 9, which affected the growth of Zelensky’s rating within the country, but quarreled him with the President of Russia.

At the same time, observers have recorded a dead end with exchanges since the summer of 2020. His reasons are clear to all involved in the process in Kyiv and Moscow. And directly with the figure of Medvedchuk, they are in no way connected. In a diplomatic manner, the situation was outlined by Donbass, the deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Dmitry Kozak, in an interview with the publication of the Publishing House of Rolitique Internationale: “On the eve of the second round of elections and in the first months after taking office, we received the Zelensky initiative and proposal to resolve the conflict today, as well as restoring the conflict. good neighborly relations with Russia. We spent a lot of time and effort in order to help realize these initiatives. ”

Even more frankly the situation was voiced by the ex-head of the office of the President of Ukraine Andrei Bogdan in one of the interviews: “We somehow threw him hard ... Putin! They promised one thing and did nothing. ”

Indeed, Russia was promised direct negotiations with the authorities of the self -proclaimed republics. What, as Zelensky himself soon understood, the President of Ukraine cannot do without consequences for his rating and domestic political problems.

Soon, Moscow’s plan to introduce the advisory council into the Minsk negotiation group, where representatives of Ordlo and Ukrainian officials could communicate with Russia's mediation.

In the most direct way, all this was reflected in those who are in prisons of the “republics”.

Local colonies with a bit are full of prisoners awaiting exchange. Throughout 2019, the “republics” were arrested by pro -Ukrainian residents. So, according to the long -noted tradition, the authorities of the “DPR” and “LPR” replenished their “exchange funds”, then to offer these people to Kyiv. But due to the termination of negotiations between Moscow and Kiev, the inhabitants of Donbass arrested at the end of 2019 and early 2020 were trapped, which the pandemic began even more exacerbated. Under the pretext of struggle with her in March 2020, the “DPR” and “LPR” closed the “border” with Ukraine and immediately introduced in all places of imprisonment, stopped taking grocery, and in the colonies were banned.

The deadline does not matter

The structure of the imprisonment of the "DPR" is peculiar. It consists of “official” colonies and pre -trial detention centers - with pre -war protection and orders, regulated by gear, connection with arrested and all softening corruption. And unofficial - concentration camp “Isolation” and the basements of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and UBOP of the Ministry of Internal Affairs - places of unlimited use of force in the absence of any legal norms.

But the “political” exchanges rarely fall into “isolation” and to torture. The innocence of most of them is obvious even to the opera MGB. These are residents of Donetsk, Gorlovka or Makeevka, detained for posts on social networks, frequent trips through the line of contact and careless thoughts expressed in public.

Such, as a rule, fall into the camera of the Donetsk pre-trial detention center, or in a chamber-type hut in the 97th colony in Makeevka, allocated specifically for “political”. All of them, at the investigation, are carried out under the articles “treason to the homeland”, “espionage in favor of a foreign state” or easier article 328 of the Criminal Code of the “DPR” (excitement of hatred and enmity, humiliation of human dignity). And at the same time, they lead to a humble position - the term does not matter, and “exchange for Ukraine” is important after any sentence.

Mom’s five

Relatives of these hundreds of those arrested can be described as a subculture of desperate, but not desperate mothers. They share information with each other, collect money for weekly food parcels, look for informal and formal communication channels with the investigation, medical personnel and the administration of the pre -trial detention center and are engaged in mutual psychological help.

This is a kind of “DPR”: the prisoners are scattered in different cameras and often not even familiar with each other and did not certainly intersect to arrest, and their relatives are raised to mutual assistance groups. These groups, more often than five, are called back, and are found “on the program”, without errors, calculating the relatives of the “spies” among all the others.

“We all met in line for programs,” says Svetlana Grigoryevna Zaporozhets, mother of Kirill Ermisheva, Novaya Gazeta. - We can see each other for a kilometer - those who have the sons of the "spies".

It is very easy to determine your own: normal decent mothers are worth it. You immediately come up and say: “Are you article 321,“ spy ”? And we are also “spies”.

Here Victoria Parfenyuk had his own pharmacy, I had a travel company, and all that’s the same-a normal audience, everyone had something, somehow spun. And our children too. But here he wrote something there on social networks ... We are always laughing, although it is somehow not funny, but I say: "I am the mother of the scout!" Lord my God, Richard Sorge took! "

Kirill Ermishev - “Carrier”, earned a living by carrying pensioners through the line of contact along the route Donetsk -Kurakhovo. Such guys due to frequent “contacts with Ukraine” were at risk by definition. But Cyril also had a disloyal post on the VKontakte page from 2016. This can pull 10 years.

For the past six months, the author of this material communicated with an informal group of relatives of six prisoners: Dmitry Parfenyuk, Kirill Ermishev, Bogdan Maksimenko, Andrei Podre, Dmitry Sidelnikov and Anatoly Kachura.

“Now a new wave of arrests has gone,” Victoria Parfenyuk, mother Dmitry Parfenyuk, tells me. - Our children, they are “spies”, because they have passports of Ukraine, and new ones with “DPR” passports - they all turn out “traitors of the homeland”. On the "transmission" of such people are 7-8 ... "

"Carriers" Kirill Ermishev and Dmitry Parfenyuk of the same age, they are 31 years old. Dmitry was declared a sentence - 10 years of imprisonment. According to the mother, they gave 12, but took into account that the accused has a young child: Dmitry’s daughter is now three years old, and on the day of arrest she was three and three.

“Our boy was detained on September 16, 2019 at a checkpoint, they came to us on the same day,” Victoria Parfenyuk told Novaya Gazeta. - He rode from Kurakhovo, spent the night there and returned home in the morning. They took him in shorts and slippers, I began to write the requirements to inform me where he was to take a parcel with warm things, products ... And again the prosecutor’s office answered: accused of espionage, the arrest was extended. Since then, nothing - the daughter -in -law was given twice with him to see him, but I am forbidden. As the investigator said to the daughter -in -law: "Your mother asks too many questions."

Dmitry Parfenyuk was also at risk - every day he transported people through the front line, and also mostly pensioners, who were noted in Ukrainian social services in the nearest town of Kurakhovo and removed their pensions at ATMs.

The video was recorded with Dmitry in the MGB - “recognition”, from which it blows madness.

In the video, Dmitry says that in July 2017 he was recruited by the SBU and, on her assignment at the parade on May 9, he shot military equipment and a stand with the leadership of the Republic specially issued by a small camera. Then, “on a detailed map of Donetsk” he was shown a military unit on Shchors Street, and he had to establish “where the entrance is, where the exit, how large the location is, the height of the fence ...”.

The “tasks”, about which Parfenyuk speaks, is the absolute nonsense. The Victory Parade in the “DPR” show in detail in direct television broadcasting all local television channels (which can be tuned from any dugout of the Armed Forces), and all the equipment, personnel and leadership of the “republic” on the rostrum can be seen there. The military unit on Shchorsa Street, which has been there for many decades, is known to all local residents with all its unchanged entry, departure and brick fence - before the war there was part of the Ukrainian internal troops, who was convinced of the prisoners in local courts. In 2014, the Kalmius team occupied its location, but the entire infrastructure remained the same.

Pregnant, problematic, and even Pole

However, even such absurdities fade against the backdrop of the case of Oksana Parshina.

On May 14, MGB officers, when entering the border with Russia, arrested a pregnant woman and for the third month they were holding her behind bars on charges of espionage.

The peculiarity of the situation is that the pregnant “spy” Oksana Parshina for a long time before the arrest did not live in a self -proclaimed republic and, as luck would have it, had a Pole map - a document that confirms a person’s belonging to the Polish people outside the historical homeland. According to the laws of Poland, the holders of the Pole card have the right to a free visa, education, legal work in the country and, if desired, obtaining citizenship. So interest in Parshina, except for journalists and relatives, is shown by the Polish Embassy in Ukraine.

Pereshina used to live in Donetsk, then she moved with a six -year -old son to Mariupol and met a man of her dreams there. The wedding was planned for June, the bride was already at the early term of pregnancy and went to Donetsk - to draw up a power of attorney for her sister for the apartment in Donetsk. Why did you need to do this before the wedding?

The fact is that since the spring in the “DPR” there has been a decree of the head of the “republic” Denis Pushilin on the order of confiscation of “noe” real estate - the one for which missing owners do not pay utility bills. It is impossible to pay a communal apartment remotely - the legal banking system and official money transfers in the "DPR" do not work. In the case of a change of surname after the wedding and receiving new documents, Parshin simply could not certify her identity in Donetsk - Ukrainian documents for “my own” citizens in the “DPR” would not recognize.

Parshin was traveling to Donetsk and a half thousand kilometers-through Kharkov, Belgorod and Rostov-on-Don. Otherwise, it is impossible to get from the territories controlled by Ukraine in the “DPR” and “LPR” - as I wrote above, all the CPVV allegedly closed from the pandemic on the demarcation line.

At the same time, the Kremlin gave the privilege to cross the Russian border in any direction to all Ukrainian citizens with a residence permit in Ukraine uncontrollable to Ukraine-this happened at the beginning of quarantine (and Rospotrebnadzor also released them from passing tests on Covid-19 when crossing the border).

Oksana was arrested at the Marinovka KPVV, when she passed passport control: her mother was already getting into the car, the carrier jumped into it - and drunk the gas. To questions about Oksana, the driver nervously answered that “they will ask questions” and then send to Donetsk.

But Oksana Parshina was closed firmly and by local standards quite logically - her future husband worked in the Ukrainian border service by a psychologist. Also on the phone, women found the number of a neighbor in the Mariupol house - it turned out that the SBU is an employee.

Recently, the DPR jailers agreed to bring the Parshin to a civilian clinic for ultrasound and take tests. They showed that there is a threat of termination of pregnancy. But they did not release the Parshin to be freedom. On the contrary, extremely irritated by rising noise and accusations of atrocities, MGB officers began to threaten her relatives. The scared sister Oksana is now afraid to communicate with journalists and only in his simplicity repeats the phrase: “How can this be in our legal state?!”

Parents of prisoners have recently been warmly discussing the recent meeting of the presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin and the possible - after the resumption of contacts between the Kremlin and the White House - the liberation of their “spies”. The logic of relatives is simple: if Moscow and Kyiv will not be able to agree with each other, then it may be possible to do this through Washington. But this option is still on the verge of fantasy.

In relations between Russia and Ukraine there are no signs of soon warming and normalization. Vice versa. Ahead-large holidays in Kyiv in connection with the 30th anniversary of the independence of Ukraine, the brightness of which will become even more symbolic against the backdrop of Putin’s statements about the “single people”. Then, on September 19, in the self -proclaimed republics, hundreds of thousands of residents of Donbass will first take part in the State Duma of the Russian Federation in improvised polling stations (they are here political correctly called “information centers for consultations of Russian citizens”).

Dmitry Durnev , Special Corps "New" and "Spectra" , Donbass