Kremlin-backed proxies released civic activist and blogger Dmytro Potekhin from captivity, President Petro Poroshenko said in a live televised question-and-answer session with journalists on Sept. 25.
He didn’t provide further details.
Potekhin was abducted on Aug. 7 at the
Donetsk railway station while apparently waiting for a Kyiv-bound train.
Olesia Oleshko, a press officer for the OSCE
Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post in August that “we
have received a phone call from a person who told us that he (Potekhin) was
detained and kept in Donetsk…Unfortunately we don’t know any other
details.”
Potekhin’s former colleague, Peter Kosh, said
on Facebook that he was accused of spying and was jailed in
the Izolyatsia (isolation) art center.
A converted power plant, this
building was captured by separatist forces on June 9 and is now
believed to be the base of the pro-Russian Vostok Battalion, whose many members
reportedly are from the Caucuses region in Russia.
Potekhin reportedly arrived at
the Donetsk railway station on Aug. 6. His family last heard from him the
following day, a TVi news report said. The next day he was detained at the same
station. Additionally, the activist’s last facebook post was on Aug. 7.
His friend, Viktor Kovalenko,
told the Kyiv Post that he had frequently travelled to Donetsk to meet with
other activists – this particular trip was planned for two days, but its
purpose was unknown.
Potekhin rose to prominence
during the Orange Revolution when he coordinated his Znayu (I know) initiative, pressuring for transparent presidential elections. He
worked as a political analyst at the Embassy of Japan in Ukraine during the
2004 presidential elections and 2006 parliamentary election.
During this period, he also
worked at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation and ran one of their Western-funded projects
on voter education and mobilization campaigns.
Last November, Potekhin started a
petition drive questioning the entire legitimacy of the Yanukovych
administration. He stopped writing his blog at Ukrainskaya Pravda that same
month.
During the EuroMaidan Revolution,
Potekhin helped train other activists in what he referred to as “passive
resistance.” Currently he is the director of European Strategy Group, a policy
center.
