The state of curve mirrors, shuld we wait for legality in Ukraine?

On July 13, 2016 in Ukraine in the Ternopil appellate court is hearing in the matter of brothers Yaroslav and Dmitry Luzhetskikh of convicts for 14 and 15 years under articles 258 and 111 will take place. Whether it is possible to count that he will pass with observance of a letter of the law and whether it is possible to count in Ukraine on real justice, or Ukraine in which time will prove to be, as “the banana republic” we will see literally in several days.

“In Ukraine there is no legal logic.” – Yaroslav and Dmitry Luzhetskiye consider that their arrest, the conclusion and the subsequent court – are illegal. Considering all that they already endured that they passed: the detention, tortures during interrogations, the term of brothers doesn’t frighten any more. However readiness to sit doesn’t exclude hope for fast release.
For what – judge brothers and how they appeared among political prisoners of Ukraine?

“Words of soul …
Release me …
Give vent!
Give rest!
Clean up walls!
Let’s enjoy in the spring!
To inhale air free, fine!
And to bathe in beams ….
To be filled with fine …
And to forget that when that there was a fear …”

“It was hot summer morning. I was woken by knock at a door with the words “rise”. To open eyes and to look round where I am, there were no forces. I caught myself on thought that I remember nothing. Everything was as in fog. Feeling that I was run over by the truck. From uncertainty I was covered by fear and panic. It was difficult to understand live I or the dead. It seemed as though time around me stopped. But I wanted to understand. What happened to me and where I am?

Having slightly opened eyes I accurately couldn’t see anything, everything was washed away. Before
the outline of the small room with the small not glazed window at which there was a lattice was eyes. Opposite to a window there were metal doors. In the head I ran thought: “really I in prison?”. Then I wanted to think that it is a dream. In independence that I then wanted the reality was is as follows: I in a solitary prison cell.” – Yaroslav Luzhetsky in the Chertkovsky pre-trial detention center No. 26 so described the first morning.

FOR WHAT?

Two years brothers Yaroslav and Dmitry Luzhetskiye sit in the Ukrainian pre-trial detention center. In February Dmitry Luzhetsky was awarded by 15 years of prison. His brother Yaroslav to 14. Probably the knowledge of law and the reasonable argument was special fault of Dmitry.

They consider that they are condemned for the fact that they Russians, that they didn’t betray memory of grandfathers and didn’t recognize nationalist revolution in Ukraine. For the fact that supported the Anti-Maidan and the republics of Novorossia.

That they Russians, and what means to be Russian in the Western Ukraine brothers learned when they were 8 years old. They were born in Kirovohrad in русско – the Ukrainian family. Unfortunately their father is from Galicia where air is literally impregnated with hatred to “Russians”. It is no wonder that marriage soon broke up and boys remained with mother. Till 8 years they grew in Kirovohrad without thinking of a nationality. They even thought that they lived in Russia. Then it was necessary to move to the father to the Western Ukraine.

Here all also began! “Convicts”, “Russians” – so teased them not only children, but also adults. That Ukrainian which they studied at the Ukrainian school of Kirovohrad was insufficiently Ukrainian for their galitsiyskikh of relatives. And school teachers and neighbors didn’t miss an opportunity to blame brothers their Russian origin. Brothers grew in situations of persecution and then they learned to stand up the friend for the friend reflecting attacks of children and adults.

In the spring, several months prior to arrest members of the Right Sector “wrung out” business at brothers – dragged in the car and threats forced to rewrite their firm and its property on other person.

After this case and after members of armed groups attempted upon Yaroslav and Dmitry’s lives, brothers Luzhetsky had to go to Russia. There they began to build the life anew. Continuation of activity in construction business seemed natural. They were engaged in it also in Ukraine to events of spring of 2014. Knowledge and contacts with the qualified Ukrainian workers, many of which lost work in Ukraine by then, at them were. For this reason brothers appeared in Ternopil again. Arrived literally for three days – to take away the families and to find old colleagues for whom they had a new work.

In opinion – Natalya Shturma, the head of department of prosecutor’s office of the Ternopil region actually they were engaged in recruitment of West Ukrainians in ranks of rebels of Donbass: “They carried out recruitment by personal contact with certain inhabitants including the Ternopil region. Besides, through social networks, they communicated with the friends in Kirovohrad, Kiev and in Russia. In the city of Moscow they hired the participant of so-called Russian devilish sects where conversation went even selling bodies which will be removed from the killed Ukrainian military” – charge, of course not comic, but truthful – whether? All proofs against them provided to court – indirect, records are mounted, and prosecution witnesses whom only two, – the staff of the State Security Service of Ukraine.
Grotesque one more her quote seems: “… Promoted activity of the terrorist organizations by granting unreliable information about a situation in the territory of Ukraine. In particular, gave interview to the Russian channels, reported doubtful data, about the events in the territory of Ukraine. Reported that when they were in the territory of Ukraine, participants of public formations tried to burn their property, offices and so on. What isn’t true at all” – in fact she incriminates to brothers communication with the Russian mass media.
COURT
Judged them under articles for treason to the homeland and for terrorist activity. Judged them long and prejudicedly as they refused a cooperation with the investigation.

Refusal of a cooperation with the investigation was caused by the fact that them just tried to obtain surnames of people which support the Republics and recognitions that they were hired by the staff of FSB that they slightly – whether not agents of FSB, demanded a surname of some specific people oppose the Kiev power, recognitions under terrorist articles.

The court passed with a huge number of procedural violations. At the last meeting on February 18 when case was already considered, debate had to be carried out, defendants had to be interrogated, the last word had to be pledged to them — it they had nothing. Neither debate, nor the last word, nothing was. The meeting was held without them.
The prosecutor gave for term in the absence of defendants, precisely also as well as the judge pronounced them a sentence without them. It was Friday February 19th. On February 22 on court session the secretary handed a sentence in hands to Yaroslav and Dmitry and told: — “Please, undersign”. In total!

The problem consists also that on Galichina to brothers absolutely not just to find the qualified and impartial lawyer. The majority West Ukrainian (and in general Ukrainian) lawyers refuses to run business of this sort, being afraid, and isn’t groundless both pressure of the State Security Service of Ukraine, and retaliations from the Ukrainian nationalists. For example the lawyer of the Russians sitting in Odessa was brutally killed in March of this year. Therefore to count that the lawyer of brothers it will be strongly not necessary to be zealous or address to the international instances. In fact brothers conduct the protection.

About bias of court and a consequence they wrote to the Verkhovna Rada – to Valeria Lutkovskaya – the representative on human rights, but is ineffectual.
After arrest seized the property from brothers – all that remained after a meeting with the Right Sector – under articles 258 and 111 will seize the property in favor of the state from all defendants. However brothers paid attention that not everything confiscated was included in the act of withdrawal. It is only possible to guess in what pockets it settled.

ARREST

In the State Security Service of Ukraine Yaroslav and Dmitry appeared on a denunciation of own father – “wanted to rescue” – Still, till today to brothers is unclear what their father wanted to rescue from, however they well see what led this “rescue” to.

Arrest happened on July 25, 2014 in one of the Ternopil cafes. The person twenty, in a form and with the covered faces rushed into the room, pushed Yaroslav and Dmitry to the floor, began to beat. Beat with butts – where it is necessary. Blows poured on the head, a stomach, a back …. About ten people in plain clothes were near: prosecutors, investigators and field investigators – they quietly watched beatings.

For the next three days brothers learned “pleasures” of the Ukrainian law-enforcement system and cellars of the State Security Service of Ukraine.

Military in masks, having put on Yaroslav and Dmitry the heads cellophane packages, brought brothers to a pit. There they underwent “indicative beatings” – beat them in turn, in the eyes each other, beating out from them recognitions in terrorist activity and names of people of sympathizers to the new proclaimed republics of Donbass, in the end, so and without having achieved anything, simulated execution.

Then they were brought to the cellar of the State Security Service of Ukraine. Brothers were tortured – broke morally and physically. Threatened families, the family, blackmailed with children, tortured also stun guns, and – in the best American traditions, water – imitating effect of drowning. Smothered, beat with cudgels heels – difficult to list everything, especially it is impossible to call those who did it – executioners constantly changed, without giving the chance to the exhausted brothers to remember the persons. When eyes of tortured were closed from exhaustion and fatigue their eyelids pasted to eyebrows, not to give to arrested the chance though for one moment to be disconnected from terrible reality.

It is possible to present that for them all occurred as in the fighter where they – the fighter’s heroes, but it was not the movie with the happy final, it was the reality. Proceeding from the human principles and beliefs, having passed through three-day tortures, they didn’t call any surname not to bring a grief and in other families.
Two years brothers in prison, and of course, to their own families it is very heavy, but Dmitry and Yaroslav’s conscience is true.

PRE-TRIAL DETENTION CENTER

When they appeared in a pre-trial detention center of tears and fear at them wasn’t any more – beat out them in 3 days of tortures. Three days without water, a dream, food, without an opportunity to descend in a toilet. For the first time they heard clanking of keys and prison locks. Outside the window of a chamber, from other chambers someone something shouted, but also to Yaroslav and Dmitry who were placed in the different cells in different parts of a pre-trial detention center was already all the same. There was no wish to understand that it is reality, reality which not to change, reality which had to be accepted with open eyes.

The first month or two it was forbidden to transfer them transfers, brothers couldn’t receive either food, or things. They were in prison all in the same clothes in which they were arrested, tortured and beat. Month without towel, shampoo, soaps, razors, toilet paper. Brothers had to wet own clothes and to wash it. In a chamber the fluorescent lamp, light which at night, especially after a beating, was simply intolerable burned with days. It was done everything possible anyway to continue humiliations and withdrawal pains. So proceeded month until they didn’t write to the Commissioner for Human Rights about conditions of their contents.

On the second week of stay in a pre-trial detention center they were carried to Ternopil. Only then they managed to meet, learn something about each other, to be convinced that both of them are living. Up to this point about each other they practically had no information.

Because of the postponed beating and tortures, health of brothers seriously reeled. After the concussion got on interrogations them headaches, dizziness, nausea and sleeplessness torment. Constant heartaches, unstable pressure, kidney and liver pains, on the fact that during detention they were just beaten off. Very severe pains in a backbone and in a breast. Stay in crude walls causes a severe cough. Often reaches spasms which can last week, it is necessary to suffer from pains as there are no anesthetics in a pre-trial detention center or just don’t give. There are problems and with a stomach which began because of awful quality of food in a pre-trial detention center. Is prison food it is almost impossible, from one smell of this food vomiting begins. The doctor in a pre-trial detention center approximately made the diagnosis that brothers are healthy, and symptoms which they call don’t need full medical examination, considers invented.

What’s next?

Luzhetskiye’s brothers consider what the outcasts who seized power in Kiev is the evil: “Angrily in pure form … Look that they create. They completely destroyed economic structure. They wiped out world monuments, destroyed houses of civilians on Donbass and not only there … All this could not be … To agree about something with Kiev there is no sense … There are no those who are responsible for the words, there are no those who will fulfill the obligations.”

Seeing the events in Ukraine and knowing Yaroslav and Dmitry’s position it is difficult to imagine that the appellate court will impartially adhere to a letter of the law and will cancel or at least will reduce term. By and large Yaroslav and Dmitry count on an exchange or that the political system which developed in the last two years on Ukraine won’t sustain rejection by her people of Ukraine more and will collapse under oppression of own contradictions.

Zenia Grynberg