The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has sent a note to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation with a request to provide information about all the circumstances of the detention of Ukrainian citizen Hennadiy Lemeshko in the occupied Crimea, the minister’s spokeswoman Mariana Betsa has said.
“As soon as we received information yesterday about the detention of our citizen in the occupied Crimea by the Russian side, we sent a note to the Russian Foreign Ministry demanding to confirm the detention, the circumstances, and what is incriminated to the Ukrainian citizen,” she told Interfax-Ukraine on August 16.
Betsa also clarified that at the moment the Foreign Ministry does not have information, whether Lemeshko was provided with legal assistance or defense.
The Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson also recalled that repressions, searches and detentions of Crimean Tatars and ethnic Ukrainians continue in the occupied Crimea.
“In general, we view recent events in the occupied Crimea as catastrophic, where repressions only intensify […] In this regard, we will turn once again to the international community with a demand to increase pressure on the Russian Federation to release our citizens on the territory of the occupied peninsula,” the Foreign Ministry spokesperson said.
As reported, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on August 15 morning it prevented acts of sabotage against Crimean infrastructure and crucial utilities and detained ‘an agent of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU)’. The Kyivsky District Court in Simferopol ordered a two-month arrest of Ukrainian citizen Hennadiy Lemeshko until September 13.
The SBU said the detention of the so-called agent is another provocation and a fake piece of news created by Russia to intimidate Crimeans.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine clarified that Lemeshko earlier served in the Donbas zone as a senior officer of a deep reconnaissance unit of the Ukrainian army from November 2016 until May 2017 and was dismissed in May due to a systematic violation of discipline under the article “inaptitude.”
