Wounded Ukrainian sailors transferred to Lefortovo on Jan 26 - lawyer
Lawyer Nikolay Polozov, the coordinator of the defense team for Ukrainian prisoners of war, wrote this on his Facebook page.
"According to the statement of the investigator, wounded prisoners of war, Ukrainian sailors Andriy Artemenko, Andriy Eider and Vasyl Soroka were transferred from the medical unit of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention center to the Lefortovo detention center back on Saturday. Matrosskaya Tishina confirmed to our lawyers that the three wounded prisoners of war do not already stay there. During the day, the investigator promised to prepare and pass to the Lefortovo detention center the permission to entrance for lawyers of the wounded prisoners of war," Polozov said.
He specified that a meeting of lawyers with Artemenko, Eider and Soroka could be complicated due to the existing objective organizational difficulties for visiting detainees in Lefortovo. "We'll look for opportunities to provide lawyers with visits to the wounded prisoners of war by this time," Polozov said.
As reported, on November 25, 2018, Russian border ships fired on and seized in the Kerch Strait three Ukrainian naval vessels that were moving from Odesa to Mariupol. Twenty-four Ukrainian sailors were captured.
The sailors were detained for two months. They were charged with illegally crossing Russia's border in the Black Sea. On November 29, Ukrainians were taken to a detention center in Moscow.
On January 16, Moscow's Lefortovo District Court extended the arrest of all 24 seamen until April 24 and 26, 2019. Attorneys will file appeals on all Ukrainians.
All captured sailors called themselves prisoners of war.
On January 24, the PACE adopted a resolution entitled "The escalation of tensions around the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait and threats to European security," which officially demands that Russia treat Ukrainian military sailors captured in the Kerch Strait in accordance with the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War.
