"I spent seven days in the cell of the suicide bombers"

The story of a resident of Donetsk, who was arrested by the DPR militants by false denunciation

Thousands of people in the territories under the control of the "DPR" and "LPR" were arrested and abandoned in prisons and camps (one of these camps is located in Donetsk in the former art center "isolation" ). They are arrested by denunciations, for the slightest offense, with an occasion and without reason. As in the days of the Stalinist terror, the militias, supporters of the DPR, suspected of non -reduction or espionage are often detained themselves. But the worst of all is the patriots of Ukraine. In the programs of Radio Liberty, Irina Dovgan , who was tied in Donetsk to the shameful pillar, artist Sergei Zakharov , who was brutally beaten for the fact that he painted a caricature of Girkin-Street,Victoria Butenko , who was tortured to his son was tied in Donetsk.

Private entrepreneur Svetlana Matushko, arrested by false denunciation, spent 7 days in the cell cell in the basement of the former SBU building on Shchors Street. Now she was able to get out to Kyiv and is participating in the work of the Migrants Committee. Here is her story:

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Svetlana Matushko in the program "Results"

- I'm a native Donetsk. From the very beginning I was on the side of the Maidan, I was on the Maidan twice, I supported in every possible way. In Donetsk, she went to rallies, told all her friends, explained what was happening. In Ukraine, the power of Yanukovych and his family was strong, literally everything suffered from this, corruption concerned every person, but they did not understand this. It seemed to them that this is "stability", they received pensions, received salaries. They voted for Yanukovych, because although a bandit, but their own, not a stranger, people somehow reasoned. I tried to explain everything to friends and relatives.

-In the Donbass, many quarreled with relatives because of political disagreements. Did you also have such schisms in your family?

The person who looked after me wrote a denunciation on me

- My family also affected this. My mother went to the so -called elections in the so -called DPR November 2. I tried to explain to her: "Mom, you now voted for a person who wanted to kill your child." She does not understand this. She says: "I voted for peace." - "Who did you vote for?" She says: "For Zakharchenko." - "And who is it?" -"I don’t know, some kind of military, with crosses, sings very well with Kobzon." -"Mom, and some kind of program, does he promise you something?" This is not interested in this, only to against the "Kyiv junta", they say so.

- Svetlana, how did you go to jail?

- The person who looked after me wrote a denunciation of me. People armed with machine guns came in camouflage and arrested me at work. They took all the equipment, documentation. Twice there was a search of a house without any sanctions, without witnesses. Two times there was a search at work, the same. They put me in the basement of the DPR - this is the former building of the SBU of Ukraine in Donetsk. I sat for seven days in the cells of the suicide bombers.

- How did you find out that a close person wrote a denunciation on you?

“They told me that they wrote a denunciation on me, and when they explained that they were being presented to me, I guessed this charge who did it.” This is not a person close to me - just a person who looked after me.

- And what happened in this denunciation?

- That I take pictures of Deneyer checkpoints and transfer the Ukrainian army.

- And it was a lie, of course?

- In what century are we living with you? How can you take pictures on a regular checkpoint and transfer to the Ukrainian army if there are DVRs, if 30 years ago was photographed through the hole in the button? Meaning?

“Why do you think he wrote a denunciation on you?” Avenging that you rejected it?

- I can't say. I asked the person who interrogated me: “I know who did it. You were awarded with some order, a monetary prize, some kind of promotion? Why did he do this?” The person who interrogated me said: "You see, now people against the backdrop of this turmoil come up with the lowest."

- That is, people who interrogated you understood that the accusation is absurd?

- Yes.

“Nevertheless, they put you in the cells of the suicide bombers?”

- Yes. I found houses during a search of Ukrainian symbols, Ukrainian flags. Among my environment I did not hide my position. You understand what they are achieving: they want to intimidate the population in Donetsk as much as possible, which is loyal to Ukraine, so that they themselves leave. And populate these territories by people who are loyal to Russia. I think that the goal is.

- Who was in the basement with you and how did you treat other prisoners?

They want to intimidate the population in Donetsk, which is loyal to Ukraine so that they themselves leave. And populate these territories by people who are loyal to Russia

-They didn’t beat me, they were more or less loyal. Former SBU and police officers were sitting, people who traded drugs, they were also put in common cameras. They threw a guy with a girl into the cell, his last name was found in the lists of the “Young Fatherland” party, they took him with his wife. He sat with tied hands for a week in handcuffs. A girl-sniper from the militias sat with me, she is 21 years old, she was pregnant. The karate coach was sitting on the denunciation of the former student. He at one time, in the presidential election, supported Tymoshenko. Donetsk businessmen were sitting. After 20 days, the basement was ready to give the terrorists all their movable and immovable property. One was released, but nothing is known about the fate of the second so far. The volunteer guy from the city of Seekla Cherkasy region came to Donetsk to friends whom he met on social networks in order to find out why the Donetsk residents vote in referenda and do not want to live in Ukraine. A naive boy came with his diary, which began to lead on the Maidan, and a camera in which there were pictures of events in Kyiv. Another guy - a student of the Donetsk National University "with an active life position" fell into the basement for asking Gubarev an unsuitable question about how they were going to pay pensions and salaries to state employees? And how are they going to meet the heating season if preparation has not yet begun for it? After the press conference was completed, he was arrested. The guys with whom I sat said that after my liberation, two women were imprisoned with them. For one neighbors, a denunciation wrote that her husband was serving in the National Guard of Ukraine, and the second was suspected that she was a sniper. They were tortured and beaten so that they went crazy. The guy who told me this himself spent a week in a solitary chamber (this is such a room in the size of one meter for one and a half and on a concrete floor a bloodied rag) without food, water and with tied hands. So he wanted to ask for a single camera back, because he could not withstand these sobs, howling and tantrums. I note that this was said by an officer who was taken twice for execution and tortured so that after three months he still undergoes a rehabilitation course. With broken ribs, with hematomas throughout the body, but I did not even hear a moan from him. Many, unable to withstand torture, ask them to be shot immediately and not mocked. Do you know what struck me the most after I was released? At the checkpoint near the SBU building, there are relatives of the missing and are waiting for a person with a list to find out whether relatives are here. And a meter from them are two OSCE cars. And at the same time they are trying to try someone in the basements. I have a question for representatives of the mission: if you are entering the building of the former SBU, where are your eyes and ears? What are these representatives of those who do not inform the world public about the real events that are now taking place in the Donbass? They do not see tanks, armored vehicles, "grades" who travel around the city with columns, do not see armed people in supermarkets? They don’t see who and from what weapons the peaceful quarters are firing, as a result of which people die and the infrastructure of the city is destroyed? And the plot in the news about what our president gives for use by the deaf -muddy representatives of the OSCE mission an armored equipment, which now needs more in the war, has caused me, to put it mildly, bewilderment.

-You talked about the girl-senip. Why was she seized if she worked for the DPR?

The man who was taken away with him was shot immediately, and approached him and hit him with a knife in his shoulder

- She called her friend to the Donetsk regional administration and said that the Ukrainians were supposedly going to “take” the administration. This friend of her went and wrote a denunciation on her. She was accused of having a connection with the Ukrainian side. A guy was sitting with me in the cell, he was 28 years old, he is a militia in the past. The guys leave the militia, "dig" their weapons, bury their own shape and leave. Many go to Ukraine, somewhere they are lost, others leave for Russia. So he was arrested, taken away for execution. As he told me, in the shot team very young guys are shot somewhere at the factory. The man who was taken away with him was shot immediately, and approached him and hit his left shoulder with a knife. He lost consciousness, fell. Then they made a control shot in the head, but the bullet only touched her head, because it was dark in the workshop. He lay half an hour in the Donetsk morgue, clogged with corpses. He waited until everything subsides, went out. The orderlies called an ambulance, he told the doctors everything. Doctors delivered him to one of the hospitals in Donetsk, performed the operation, so he survived. When I left the camera where we were sitting together, I left my phone number, he called me, and I took it from the hospital. Now he has gone to his hometown, looking for a job, drawing up a disability group, walks around hospitals. Here is such a story, and there are many these stories.

- How and why were you released?

I have only from the callscent of the "Butcher", "Abwehr", "Boav" blood in the veins.

“ You know, this is now a mystery to me. ” I still cannot understand this. They constantly told me that I would not return soon, and in the basement where we were sitting, the people who surrounded me said that with such a position as mine, I have no way out of here. The first person who interrogated me said that he was part of the Berkut on the Maidan. I took the camera, there were photos from the Maidan. When he saw that I was on the Maidan, he shouted that I was only necessary to shoot me for this, that I allegedly threw Molotov’s cocktails. Then, two days later, he had already interrogated me another. At interrogations, they discussed politics, the economy what they are going to do. I asked where financing would come from, how they are going to pay pensions, social payments, said that money was not received in the budget, that the business was leaving from Donetsk. We discussed such topics with them. Constantly, when they called me, I thought that everything was already - for execution. On the fourth day, he told me that they would not shoot me. He said that their three sits, who decides what to do with a person. I have only from the call sign "Butcher", "Abwehr", "Boav" blood in the veins will hasten. Then, after some time, he told me that they would not call me to this three that everyone will decide without me. So on Monday they released me.

- Among those people who arrested you were the Russians?

- The man who the latter interrogated me presented me his passport, said he was from Mariupol. The rest did not seem to be, but according to the conversation it was clear that it was Russians, because we did not say that in Ukraine.

Refugees rally from Donbass against the "elections" in the DPR. Kyiv, November 2

- How are rich people who supported Yanukovych first live in Donetsk now, and then financed the DPR? Do they continue to maintain separatism, and what happened to their business and real estate?

- The rich Donetsk residents never supported Yanukovych, because they “crushed” business with him. Yanukovych was supported by the bandits who once “squeezed” the business for someone, and then imagined themselves to be businessmen. I, fortunately, do not know anything about their fate now. After the marathon in Kiev on November 2, I met our businessmen who left Donetsk after arriving in the city of Strelkov. So they organized the Committee on the Affairs of Forced Migrants. "To the opposite are decent people," as one of them said. The Donetsk business elite never supported Yanukovych. When my uncle was a representative of Tymoshenko in the elections in the Donetsk region, businessmen addressed him and helped in every way so that Yanukovych would not win. They understood that the lady and the scythe was not ideal, but anyone, just not the "dad", as Lyudmila Yanukovych calls him. Some of the rich Donetsk residents who never supported Yanukovych managed to take out production, someone remained and pays taxes and the DPR now, and Ukraine in the hope that in a month or two it will end.

- You mentioned Lyudmila Yanukovych. What's wrong with her, she stayed in Donetsk?

-The former first lady of the country freely came to shopping at the Auchan supermarket with one guard who acted as a porter rather, and so “in a simple way” communicated with people and employees of the market. But when Dad fled to Rostov, she disappeared.

- Svetlana, you just returned from the sanatorium near Kiev, where immigrants live from Donetsk. What are the conditions?

This is a pure form of terrorism. 1937, when a person is taken by denunciation

- Double rooms turned into five -seater. There is no room for cabinets, bedside tables and tables. In the corridors there is a cry of children that no one is engaged in. I met a young woman from Simferopol, she is a pathologist. It works in two jobs. The kids are brought up by herself. The girl is three years old, about five to a boy. So she fell asleep at the table in the kitchen, while someone was preparing dinner in a cramped kitchen, someone had already eaten and worked loudly. The name of this woman is Maria. The Berkutovites on the Maidan killed her nose bridge, and only now she did a plastic surgery. The operation is expensive, I had to leave the apartment that I was renting, since there was nothing to pay, and thanks to the help of some deputy, she got into the sanatorium. She came to his office and told him what sofa they would sleep in his office. Three days later, he solved her a question with housing. What temperature there will be at minus twenty, it is difficult to predict. The kids are infinitely sick. Another lonely dad from the Luhansk region, who works in an Italian restaurant in Kyiv, is now leaving her child on Maria and returns late. I was invited to the room where men live. Someone lies and rests after work, looking just at the ceiling, someone reads. On their faces, the seal of doom.

- Do you think the DPR will last long?

- I think no.

-Will it collapse due to internal reasons, economic problems or the Ukrainian army will go on the offensive?

- I think that Ukraine needs to free its territory from terrorists. This is a pure form of terrorism. 1937, when a person is taken by denunciation. People must be released, because many patriots are intimidated, many leave. The real partisanism, people are simply afraid to go outside, hide, fight as they can.

- But a military decision will lead to great victims among the civilians ...

- I do not know how to do the right thing, but you can’t throw the people who remain there. When a girkin shooter came out of Slavyansk and came to Donetsk - it was such a mistake! Until now, the Donetsk residents cannot understand how they could release it and let it into Donetsk. I don't know what to do now. It seems to me that it is necessary to somehow close the border with Russia and isolate them so that there are no supplies of weapons and manpower from Russia. But people must be released. I think Ukraine should do this.