Anybody living in Ukrainian-controlled territories has probably heard the question about why ordinary people aren't protesting Russian-separatist rule in the eastern Donbas.
It turns out that they are. But some of them are in jail for it.
Ravlyky (snails), a group of pro-Kyiv partisans from Donetsk, have been assisting intelligence officials and police in the past year by gathering information on separatists and their collaborators. Members of the group had previously fought on the war front in the east but decided their skills would be better used in finding and arresting separatist collaborators.
“A lot of people say Donetsk isn’t resisting the separatists, but that’s not true,” said Bohdan Chaban, one of the volunteers who wound up in a Mariupol jail for his efforts. Chaban spoke to the Kyiv Post through his lawyer, Dmytro Korobko.
After peaceful attempts failed to save Donetsk, Chaban said he had no other choice but to volunteer and fight: “I wanted my home back. I had to close my café and leave my beloved city behind. The only means available to me…was to become a volunteer and fight for Donetsk. I want to go home, to Ukrainian Donetsk.”
He and two other members of the group found the tables turned on them on May 8 when local police took them into custody instead of the separatists. The incident occurred on a farm in the Velykonovosilkivsky district of Donetsk Oblast, when Ravlyky members showed up to arrest separatist collaborators storing weapons on the property.
The identities of the three volunteers – Chaban, Borys Ovcharov and Oleksandr Kryukov – have only now been revealed in a bid to secure their release from the jail where they have spent nearly a month on charges they say are fabricated. Authorities charged them with armed robbery.
“They don’t belong to any specific battalions. They’re just fighting for their homeland. These groups operate in deep black. If they are caught…they are on their own …and they don’t have a support unit to come to their rescue if something happens,” said Danylo Kovzhun, a friend and colleague of the jailed volunteers.
Kovzhun had been coordinating with the group during the operation. He said the farm raid was initially a success.
When the group entered, “they saw weapons, grenade launchers, explosives, Russian flags. And police counting stacks of money that had been taken out of a deposit box,” he said.
Chaban, Ovcharov and Kryukov were there to assist another group of vigilantes, who had arrested four guards storing the weapons for separatists, and police were quickly called to take them away.
However, “about half an hour later, another group of police arrived and said they’d found Hr 80,000 of stolen money in a car belonging to the first group of volunteers. So both groups of volunteers are now charged with armed robbery,” Kovzhun said.
Korobko, the lawyer for the group, said he believed the case was a way for authorities to crack down on vigilantes, sending the message that their help is no longer welcome.
Before, he said, authorities in Kyiv needed them and didn’t interfere with their work. “Now, when they’re no longer convenient, they’re labeled criminals. Maybe the separatists have been complaining to our president,” Korobko said.
He described the raid on the farm as a well-orchestrated trap, noting that the three volunteers had been working together with investigators and police and had only gone to the farm to offer assistance to other vigilantes.
He suspects an “order had come down from the very top, from the president” to rein in the volunteers. So the police probably framed them, he said.
“They intentionally sent them there to have them arrested. They used them,” Korobko said.
Requests for comment were sent to both the Mariupol police department and prosecutors. They were not immediately answered.
Korobko noted that nine volunteers had been arrested in total, and he conceded that laws had been broken. But not by his three clients, he said.
“I know that they definitely didn’t break any laws, and the stolen money that was found was discovered in a different car, not the car they were using. They’re not criminals… They’re patriots,” he said, adding that he was currently trying to get them released on bail.
Kovzhun agreed that the case was likely politically motivated, part of a larger campaign to get rid of volunteers near the frontlines altogether.
He said that according to a truce brokered in February in Belarus, all volunteer forces were supposed to be withdrawn from the front line.
“But think about it. If you’re an army commander and a group of well-equipped people come to you and say, ‘Our home is in occupied territory. We have our own equipment, we have our own weapons. We don’t want medals or salaries, we are fighting for our country and we want our homes back.’ Nobody will say no to that,” Kovzhun said.
He continued: “This is happening everywhere along the frontline. And this is not something that can be stopped … It’s not like the president or a commander can say ‘We will withdraw all these forces.’ They can’t.”
