Afanasyev and Soloshenko, who returned to Ukraine, said "how the FSB breaks people in captivity"

Released by Russia this week in exchange for two Odessa journalists Elena Glishchinskaya and Vitaly Didenko, who were in custody in Ukraine, Yuri Soloshenko and Gennady Afanasyev gave an interview with Ukrainian Pravda . The 25-year-old Afanasyev told about torture, and the 74-year-old Soloshenko-about the pressure on him in "captivity".

Journalists talked with compatriots in the hospital, where they were delivered after arriving in Kyiv. Earlier it was reported that Soloshenko suffers from cancer, and Afanasyev detected a blood disease.

Gennady Afanasyev said that after the detention of threats and torture, he was forced to sign the testimony. The publication emphasizes that the young man met correspondents in a T -shirt with the image of the symbol of the country - a trident - and with the same pendant on his neck, and a Ukrainian flag lay next to him. Gennady asked to speak to him in Ukrainian, although he does not speak very well for them. “This is fundamentally,” he explained.

According to Afanasyev, he was detained in Simferopol on May 9, 2014 after the parade. The young man said that he was seized and pushed into the car "Guys in civilian clothes with machine guns" when he went to a friend of the girl in the city center. “In the car they threw me on the floor, put a bag on my head and took me. While they were driving - they beat me in the stomach and head, asked about different people, threatened that they were being taken to the forest, that I would dig a grave for myself,” Afanasyev said. He was brought home, where with a bag on his head he was brought into the apartment and thrown to the floor. After the search, they took the FSB in the Crimea, and from there to the temporary content for 10 days.

Gennady Afanasyev noted that he was not provided with a lawyer, "but there were a lot of investigators from Moscow and very large guys from the Caucasus, FSB officers." According to Afanasyev, who leads Newsru.ua , he was chained to the iron table, beat, threatened, demanding that he supposedly intended to blow up the eternal fire on May 9 in Simferopol. Then his tormentors put on boxing gloves and beat them on the head - so that there were no bruises. All 10 days, while the young man was in custody, he was not allowed to sleep, there was, there was not even toilet paper.

During the first five days, Afanasyev, according to him, was put on a bag and strangled. Then serious torture began - "put on a gas mask on the head with a hose, unscrewed the lower valve and sprayed the spray there - the vomit began, you began to choke on this because you are in the mask." “When you choke, they take off the mask, they let the ammonia smell - and everything is repeated,” the liberated Ukrainian said. According to him, he was also connected to the electric wires to the genitals and beaten.

“So they forced to sign on the documents,” Afanasyev explained, adding that threats to “get” to his mother acted on him. As a result, he signed the documents, and he was transported to Moscow, where he was again forced to speak on television, "to say what they need."

As Afanasyev said, after a speech in court, when he stated that the other defendants in the case - Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko - were innocent, the FSB operatives in Rostov arranged his beating. "Due to the fact that lawyers and defenders appeared, they were able to fix these injuries that were inflicted on me," he said. “You know, after I came to court and said that Kolchenko and Sentsov are not to blame, something has changed in me - I stopped being afraid,” Afanasyev admitted.

Soloshenko tried to break morally

In turn, Yuri Soloshenko told the Ukrainian Truth reporters that although they did not beat him in the colony, they tried to morally break. "In Russia, it is not necessary to count on some kind of humanism at all. This monster, Russia, one power is an autocrat of all Rus' and the FSB guardsmen," said Soloshenko.

According to the Ukrainian, the security forces also forced him to accept Russian citizenship, promising in this case to transfer to the status of a witness, but he did not agree.

“Those who are now hostage in the Russian Federation would like to say that they were holding, they believed because Ukraine did not forget about them - she is fighting for each of its citizen,” Soloshenko turned to his compatriots.

Gennady Afanasyev and Yuri Soloshenko on June 14 were exchanged for Odessa journalists Vitaly Didenko and Elena Gloshchinskaya. Glishchinskaya was arrested on April 28, 2015 on charges of separatism - namely, in the creation of the organization "People’s Rada Bessarabia", which, according to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), created the conditions for the rejection of the southern regions of the Odessa region from Ukraine. At the time of the arrest, Elena had two young children, she gave birth to a third child on April 27, 2016 in a prison hospital.

Vitaly Didenko, editor of the Infocenter publication, was also accused of participating in the activities of the "People's Rada of Bessarabia". During the investigation, he pleaded guilty, was convicted under the article “an encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, and the day before he was pardoned by the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko. Didenko had practically departed the punishment by the time of liberation - three years of restriction of freedom, taking into account six months spent in jail.

Gennady Afanasyev received seven years of imprisonment with serving a general regime in a colony in the case of the preparation of terrorist attacks in the Crimea, in which Ukrainians Yuri Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko were also convicted. According to investigators, Afanasyev was part of the Sentsov group, which in April 2014 allegedly, on the direction of the radical organization "Right Sector" (prohibited in the Russian Federation), created the terrorist community in Simferopol. According to investigators, Alexei Chirniy, Gennady Afanasyev and Alexander Kolchenko, on the orders of Sentsov, set fire to the buildings of the Russian community of Crimea and the local branch of United Russia. After that, Chirniy and Afanasyev were preparing for terrorist attacks in Simferopol, the court established. Sentsov received 20 years in a maximum security colony in August 2015.

Former Director of the Ukrainian Banner of the Ukrainian Plant Yuri Soloshenko in October 2015 was sentenced by the Moscow City Court to six years in a maximum security colony for espionage in favor of Ukraine. He was detained in August 2014 during a trip to Moscow "while trying to illegally acquire secret components for the S-300 air defense system," which, according to investigators, were intended "to restore the air defense systems of Ukraine." In court, he pleaded guilty and was sent to the colony near Nizhny Novgorod.