You're reading: Students hand professor over to security service for making pro-separatist statements

The peculiar nature of the conflict in Ukraine, which has not officially been declared a war but has now killed nearly 7,000 people, has produced a strange result: an air of suspicion along the front line so strong it prompts ordinary residents to hunt for “separatists” among their own neighbors and friends.


On Aug. 13,
the Security Service of Ukraine announced it had issued an official warning to
a university professor in the western city of Zhytomyr after his own students
ratted him out for expressing support for Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine.

SBU
spokeswoman Irina Martynyuk said in a statement that “if (the professor)
repeats these actions he will be detained and his actions will be prosecuted
under the Criminal Code.”

The
grassroots initiative to root out separatist sympathizers is nothing new.
Throughout the conflict, the Security Service of Ukraine has regularly
announced the detention of residents near the front line who collaborate with
separatists, either for monetary gain or for political reasons.

The
widespread practice of separatist forces using informants from among the local
population has now apparently fueled so much paranoia among ordinary citizens
that it has reached the west of the country, hundreds of kilometers from the
front.

Alexander
Demchenko, the head of the “Stop Separatism” volunteer group, has taken the
initiative a step further and begun serving as a go-between for ordinary
residents and the SBU.

“People
living near the front are often afraid to call the Security Service of Ukraine
(SBU) or just can’t get through, and some don’t even know where to send such
information. My partner and I have been collecting complaints (about
separatists) for a year now and passing them on to the SBU,” Demchenko said.

When he
first started, he said, most of the calls came from Odesa, Mykolaiv and
Kharkiv, with several tips a day, whereas now most calls come from Kyiv.

In one case,
he said, a man had called to complain about his mother-in-law defending
Russia’s actions over dinner.

The SBU has
repeatedly encouraged residents to look out for separatist collaborators,
offering a hotline for tips and setting up eye-catching billboards in the east.
The Donetsk regional police department has joined in and set up a special email
tip line as well.

“People of
various ages write to us – young people, pensioners,” Natalya Shiman,
spokeswoman for the Donetsk regional administration, was cited as saying by
Segodnya.ua.

“Each day
we get 3-4 messages. For example, work is now under way to catch a recruiter
for the separatists. We learned of this from the driver of a postal truck,” she
said, adding that the recruiter had offered money for information on Ukrainian
troop movements.

In the
Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast, billboards and signs line the
streets with appeals to residents to watch out for the warning signs of an
“ordinary separatist.” They are said to “defile national symbols” and “are
awaiting the arrival of the Russian world,” according to the signs, which offer
the phone number of a hotline to call should you encounter such a person.

The signs
politely inform passersby that collaborating with separatist forces will get
you between 7-12 years in prison.

Not
everyone is supportive of the widespread initiative to track down separatist
collaborators, however.

In an editorial published by Inforesist.org on Aug. 14, Semyon Gluzman,
a former Soviet dissident and the head of the Ukrainian Psychiatric
Association, warned that people could abuse the hotline to settle personal
scores.

“With us, separatism is starting to be rooted out and persecuted using
the recipe of Yozhov and Beria. (Nikolai Yozhov and Lavrentiy Beria, two heads
of the Soviet secret police under dictator Josef Stalin). Publicly calling for
the population to spot those who are not content (with the current situation).
I would like to ask one question: what percentage of people living in shelled,
starving and socially deprived villages in Donbas are content? And what
percentage of the so-called content people wouldn’t use the opportunity to
tattle on “separatists” to settle scores with their previous enemies, their
annoying neighbor or ex-husband who doesn’t want to pay alimony?”

Deputy
police chief of Donetsk Oblast Ilya Kiva, who in comments to the Kyiv Post
described separatism as a “plague that needs to be stamped out before it
spreads further,” refused to say whether the police tip line had ever been
abused by local residents seeking to settle scores.

“Of course,
it’s human nature that these things would happen. I wouldn’t rule out that it
is happening. But in each case the information provided is thoroughly and
carefully investigated to ensure that the system is not abused,” Kiva said.

He declined
to specify whether or not police had documented any such cases since starting
the tip line.

A request
for comment sent to the SBU on whether or not its tip line had ever been abused
was not immediately answered.

Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]