28 Hostages of the Kremlyn

28 HOSTAGES OF THE KREMLIN
Oleksandr Kostenko participated in protest rallies known as Euromaidan.
Following the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Kostenko, fearing persecution,
remained in mainland Ukraine. According to Counsel Dmitryi Sotnikov, Kostenko
was kidnapped from the territory of Ukraine and transferred to the Bryansk
Province of the RF. He managed to flee from his kidnappers in December 2014,
and he returned to Crimea via the territory of Russia. A few days later, a man
named V. Poliyenko, a former employee of the Crimean Special Police ‘Berkut’,
who crossed over to the law enforcement bodies of the occupant, filed a claim
against Kostenko, accusing him of allegedly throwing a stone at him during
Euromaidan in Kyiv, when Poliyenko, as a police officer, was fulfilling his duties
of ‘maintaining public order’.
| | Detention and torture
Oleksandr Kostenko was arrested on 5 February, 2015, in Simferopol near the entrance
to his house. Two residents of the same house witnessed the arrest. It is known that
former employees of the Security Service of Ukraine, who crossed over to the service
in Russia’s FSB, Andrey Tishenin and Artur Shambazov, took part in the arrest. Kostenko
himself recognised them, as they had already met earlier. Moreover, according to the counsel,
Kostenko was involved in exposing trafficking schemes, in which the aforementioned workers
of the Security Services of Ukraine and the Russian FSB had been implicated. Thus, in this
story, according to Kostenko’s counsel, we can also find the motives for personal revenge
of Tishenin and Shambazov. During their arrest, they broke Kostenko’s arm, which was later
29
An excerpt from the transcript of the hearing on the case of Kostenko of May 2015, in which
Oleksandr describes his kidnapping by the FSB, (former SBU) the first interrogation and in
particular, the use of torture