Representatives of the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" (DPR) claim that Ukrainian troops have captured the "DPR" Defense Ministry's political correspondent and French national Yury Yurchenko in the town of Ilovaisk.
“Today Ukrainian forces captured a war correspondent from the DPR
Defense Ministry’s political department in the town of Ilovaisk,”
sources in the “ministry” told Interfax.
The “DPR” administration would not say how or why Yurchenko was arrested.
At the same time, the ministry expressed its “deep concern over the
future fate of Yurchenko, since the Ukrainian troops around Ilovaisk
were formed from far-right ideologist volunteers and mercenaries.”
Ukrainian officials were not immediately available to confirm this report.
For his part, Anton Heraschenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian interior
minister, said that “a group of eight separatists dispatched as
reinforcements to the Ilovaisk grouping of separatists” was being held
in Ilovaisk on Aug. 20.
“Among those captured is an interesting person, Yury Vasilyevich
Yurchenko. Yurchenko, Yury Vasilyevich (Paris), a playwright, actor,
poet, winner of international competitions, and President of the Les
Saisons Russes (Russian Seasons) Association, France,” Heraschenko wrote
on his Facebook page on Aug. 20.
Yurchenko worked as “a French translator of statements and news
stories” from the self-proclaimed DPR “for what he calls a breaking of
the information blockade on Novorossiya in the French-speaking countries
of the European Union,” the Ukrainian minister’s adviser wrote.
Yurchenko, like the rest of the captives, including a Slovakian, held
on Monday, will be handed over to investigators once Ilovaisk is
finally cleared of militants, Heraschenko said.
“The extent of his guilt and responsibility will be determined by the courts,” Heraschenko stressed.
