Ukrainian Political Prisoners’ Relatives Rally For Meeting With President

Relatives of Ukrainian political prisoners jailed in Russia have held a protest near the Presidential Administration to demand a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko.

The protesters created an improvised meeting space by setting up a chair labeled “For the President”  and a table with information about political prisoners. They also announced that they were expecting Poroshenko.

The relatives held homemade signs with slogans like: “Russia tortures, Ukraine doesn’t save” (a phrase that rhymes in Ukrainian) and “Mr. President, meet with the Kremlin captives’ relatives.”

Political prisoners' relatives demand a meeting with President Poroshenko, February 21, 2018 , Photo: Oleksandr Kokhan, Hromadske

Igor Kotelyanets, brother of Eugene Panov, accused of preparing acts of “sabotage” in Crimea, said the families wanted answers from the President about the release process of their relatives.

“Now we are preparing an appeal to the President requesting that he carry out this meeting,” Kotelyanets said. “We feel that there should be a separate person who will work on the issue of political prisoners in Russia, because these cases must be addressed separately from the cases of servicemen imprisoned in the occupied territories.”

During the rally, a representative of the secretariat of the Presidential Administration approached the relatives, assuring them their petition would be passed on to Poroshenko.

Halyna Vyhovska — the mother of Valentin Vyhovsky, who was sentenced to 11 years in prison for "espionage" in Russia — stressed that political prisoners are waiting for their release and were constantly interested in the process.

She says her son, who up until recently has been held in pretrial detention, had lost a lot of weight but remains optimistic and frequently asks about the liberation process.

“We want these negotiations to be transparent, so that we know how they are going and what to tell our children,” Vyhovska said.

During the demonstration, Iryna Herashchenko, a presidential special representative to the Tripartite Contact Group on Ukraine, met with the protesters. She said that the President personally keeps on eye on the issue of political prisoners. Herashchenko also said that Kyiv is prepared to exchange Russian citizens detained in Ukraine for Ukrainians held in Russia, but that Moscow opposes this plan.

Human rights activist Maria Tomak told Hromadske that this is the first demonstration in four years where the demands included a meeting with the president. She noted calls for the appointment of an individual who would be responsible for working on the issue of political prisoners in Russia are nothing new.

“We constantly emphasize this and, in response, we’re told that there’s Iryna Herashchenko. But she works on the issue of political prisoners in the occupied territories and these matters must not be conflated. The people who are in Russia cannot be included in the discussion of the Minsk group,” Tomak said. For this reason, the relatives believe Ukraine must pursue a more persistent policy on the matter.

“Furthermore, with the cases of Akhtem Chiygoz and Ilmi Umerov, who were freed thanks to the President of Turkey, we saw that it’s possible,” Tomak added.

Relatives of political prisoners say they will continue to rally if the President doesn’t meet with them in the near future.

/By Yuliana Skibitska

/Translated by Matthew Kupfer and Natalie Vikhrov