You're reading: Activists negotiating for release of journalist taken captive by pro-Russian militants in Slovyansk

A Ukrainian journalist and EuroMaidan activist was reportedly taken captive by pro-Russian militants in the embattled eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk late on April 20 and is being held in the local security service building seized earlier by the group.

Irma Krat, 29, the editor-in-chief of Hidden Truth TV and the
leader of an all-female self-defense unit during the EuroMaidan Revolution that
ousted the former government and President Viktor Yanukovych, was captured around
8 p.m. on Easter Sunday, Krat’s lawyer, Oleg Veremiyenko, told the Kyiv Post on April 21.

He said she was being held with freelance
journalist Serhiy Lefter, 22, who had been detained since April 16.

Krat was “taken hostage,” Veremiyenko said, on
suspicion of torturing and killing a Berkut riot police officer, an accusation
he called “bullshit.”

“She never tortured or killed anybody,” he added.

Disbanded after the
EuroMaidan Revolution in February, the Berkut was Ukraine’s elite riot police
force that on several occasions attempted to violently suppress anti-government
protesters. Its members are suspected of killing many of the 105
protesters killed during the uprising.

A human rights
advocate from Donetsk, some 100 kilometers south of Slovyansk, was set to meet
with Krat’s captors on Monday afternoon to negotiate her release, Veremiyenko
said. As of 2:20 p.m. there was no word as to whether negotiations were
successful. It is also unknown whether Lefter has or would be released as part of the negotiations.

Russia’s Life
News posted a video interview on
April 20 with a blindfolded woman it said was Krat. In it, she says she works as
a journalist and came to Slovyansk “to cover the events.”

“They (pro-Russian
militants) say I am against a referendum. I was detained, but was not beaten.
They treated me normally,” Krat is heard saying.

She goes on
to explain that she came to Slovyansk to do live feeds, like she had done
throughout the EuroMaidan Revolution, but claimed she did not have a team with
her. She says she had an internet modem worth $100 and a Samsung phone, and
that was enough equipment to live-stream events in the same style as many other journalists in Ukraine.

She says her all-female
self-defense unit filmed live broadcasts from Maidan, as well, which Veremiyenko
confirmed.

Krat also says
she wanted to ask eyewitnesses about the shootout that occurred earlier Sunday
morning in the village of Bylbasovka near Slovyansk, and to share their accounts of the
event. “I don’t want there to be rumors that four people died, or something
like that,” she says. “My job is to find a person who was a witness and find
out the truth.”

Before her masked captors escort her away, she adds that they “will check
the reports I’ve filed and then they’ll decide when to let me
go.”

Journalist Irma Krat lights a candle in a tent on Independence Square during the EuroMaidan Revolution.

Veremiyenko alleged that her
captors were using her as a “human shield” to protect themselves from a
Ukrainian anti-terrorist operation. But the operation, which began last week, was halted on April 19 as part of a deal to deescalate the situation in Ukraine agreed upon during a quadrilateral meeting in Geneva.

Veremiyenko added
that the pro-Russian militants holding her believe she is a supporter of the far-right nationalist groups who played a prominent role during the EuroMaidan
protests.

Krat’s Facebook profile does
show her standing amid a group of men donning armbands with a modified
wolfsangel insignia associated with Nazism and used by the former Social-National Party of Ukraine. But she is
not wearing one in the photo, and when asked about her political affiliations, Veremiyenko said that
Krat is aligned with no political party in Ukraine.

“She is actually
strongly opposed to Svoboda, for example,” he said, referring to the
nationalist political party whose members, including leader Oleh Tiahnybok,
have made racist and anti-Semitic remarks in the past.

Meanwhile, Donetsk journalist Denis
Kazanskiy reported
on Facebook
that three foreign journalists had been captured on April 21. He
told the Kyiv Post that he had spoken with Belarusian journalist Dmytro Galko
on the phone as he was being taken captive.

After being detained for 30 minutes, Galko and the two
other journalists he was with were released, he told Radio
Svoboda
by phone.

“We were detained in Slovyansk together with Italian
and French journalists for alleged unauthorized recording,” he told the news
outlet.

There have been several reports of journalists being intimidated, assaulted and kidnapped since armed pro-Russian militants seized government
buildings in cities throughout the eastern Donetsk region more than a week ago.

Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM.