Pyotr Lyubchenkov, an emigrant from Russia, is an outcast in his native country after fleeing to Ukraine from escalating political repression because of his pro-Ukrainian views.
Instead of a welcome party, Lyubchenkov, a psychologist from Russia’s Krasnodar Region, has had to face a hostile attitude from Ukrainian migration authorities, prosecutors and police and possible arrest and extradition.
Moreover, Ukrainian officials have cooperated with Russian authorities on Lyubchenkov’s prosecution, while some of them have reportedly voiced pro-Russian views amid the Kremlin’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine.
The Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Police argued that their actions were legitimate, while the State Migration Service did not reply to repeated requests for comment by email and phone.
Wanted by Russia
In May 2014 pro-Kremlin activists filed a report on Lyubchenkov’s pro-Ukrainian and anti-Kremlin posts on social networks, and he was interrogated by the police.
The police then arrested Lyubchenkov, accusing him of resisting them, and held him in a detention facility for 10 days. He denies resisting the police and says the arrest was a vendetta for his refusal to cooperate with them.
He also told the Kyiv Post that pro-Kremlin activists had threatened to burn his office.
In June 2014 Lyubchenkov decided it was no longer safe for him to stay in Russia and went to Odesa, where he subsequently applied for refugee status and became a member of the city’s pro-Ukrainian self-defense unit. “I had no resources to fight Russia’s repressive system,” he said.
In August 2014 Lyubchenkov remotely took part in the organization of a rally for the autonomy of Russia’s Krasnodar Region when he was already in Ukraine. He says the protest was a response to Russia’s efforts to create separatist “people’s republics” in eastern Ukraine.
Last December a Krasnodar court sentenced Daria Polyudova, an activist who organized the protest jointly with Lyubchenkov, to two years in prison for infringing on Russia’s territorial integrity.
In the run-up to the rally, Lyubchenkov published a poster that read “the ethnic Ukrainians of Kuban (another name for Krasnodar Region) ask Ukraine and the world community to protect them from repression and Russian chauvinism. Kuban demands joining Ukraine, its historical homeland!”
Kuban, populated with descendants of Ukrainian Cossacks, was Ukrainian-speaking until it was russified in the 20th century.
As a result, Russia’s Federal Security Service started an investigation against Lyubchenkov on charges of infringing on the country’s territorial integrity. In February 2015 a Krasnodar court issued an arrest warrant for Lyubchenkov in absentia.
Asylum seeker
Lyubchenkov expected that he would be protected by Ukrainian authorities from persecution in Russia.
But he was not welcome. Lyubchenkov said that Anatoly Maksimenko, head of Odesa’s refugee department, and other employees of the department had repeatedly expressed pro-Russian and pro-separatist views in conversations with him.
The State Migration Service rejected his application for refugee status in January 2015. Lyubchenkov appealed the decision, and a court ordered the service to re-launch the refugee application process.
Natalia Kononenko, a representative of the State Migration Service, said during court hearings on Lyubchenkov’s refugee status that Russia is a democracy without any political persecution and that Lyubchenkov is a dangerous extremist, according to Lyubchenkov, his lawyer Oleksandr Yakovenko and media reports.
In February 2016 the State Migration Service rejected Lyubchenkov’s application for asylum again.
But an Odesa court on May 11 required the service to give asylum to Lyubchenkov, though the service might appeal the ruling.
The State Migration Service has been reluctant to give refugee status to Russians. A total of 130 Russians applied for asylum in Ukraine in 2014 amid the Kremlin’s crackdown on dissent following the EuroMaidan Revolution and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and 86 Russians applied in 2015.
Only 11 applicants were granted asylum in 2015.
Extradition saga
Russia has asked Ukrainian authorities to extradite Lyubchenkov in the case involving his pro-Ukrainian post.
Serhiy Kostenko, then a deputy prosecutor of Odesa Oblast, on Jan. 12, 2015 asked the police to “immediately arrest” Lyubchenkov “if there are no relevant obstacles to extradition,” according to a copy of his letter.
Vera Zaporozhets, an Odesa-based journalist who specializes in courts, and other critics have accused Kostenko, an ally of ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka’s son Artem, of seizing businesses and extorting money from them. He denies the accusations.
In April Kostenko was elected to the Qualification and Discipline Commission, a nationwide prosecutorial governing body.
Other officials involved in the case include Oleh Zhuchenko, a deputy prosecutor of Odesa Oblast, and Marianna Dulan, a prosecutor whom Lyubchenkov accused of pro-Russian views.
In another letter, the Prosecutor General’s Office asked the regional prosecutor’s office on Dec. 7, 2015 to arrest Lyubchenkov for further extradition if there are no grounds that could impede it.
Cooperation between Ukrainian and Russian prosecutors led to searches at Lyubchenkov’s apartment in Krasnodar, seizure of computers and interrogation of his relatives by the Federal Security Service, he said.
Ukrainian prosecutors violated both Ukraine’s Criminal Procedure Code and international law because they must have rejected Russia’s requests outright, given the clear political motivation of the case, Lyubchenkov’s lawyer Yakovenko told the Kyiv Post.
The Prosecutor General’s Office told the Kyiv Post that its actions were justified since Russian-Ukrainian treaties on extradition were valid despite Russian aggression.
The prosecutor’s office said, however, that Lyubchenkov cannot be extradited as long as he is applying for refugee status or is recognized as a refugee.
The State Migration Service has actively cooperated with prosecutors in the search for Lyubchenkov. In a letter sent to prosecutors dated Feb. 17, 2016, the service specified the locations where Lyubchenkov can be found and his phone number.
Another pro-Ukrainian Russian, Anastasia Leonova, was arrested last year on terrorism charges by the Security Service of Ukraine in what critics believe to be a fabricated case.
Police troubles
Lyubchenkov said that a police officer from Odesa’s Primorsky police precinct had called him in December 2015 and asked him to come over to the precinct, saying that he had documents authorizing his arrest.
“(Prosecutors) want to keep me for a year in a cell until they decide whether to extradite me or not,” Lyubchenkov said. “My lawyer says that I shouldn’t participate in rallies and shouldn’t come across the police.”
Lyubchenkov added, however, that the police had been dragging its feet on arresting him, which he believes is the only reason why he is still free.
The National Police told the Kyiv Post it was required by the law to look for and arrest suspects wanted by other countries. It said that the issue of Lyubchenkov’s arrest or extradition would be decided by prosecutors and courts if the case against him is deemed to be politically motivated.
“A comeback of pro-Russian forces is under way in Ukraine, and the country’s supreme leadership has guaranteed that pro-Russian officials will keep their jobs,” Lyubchenkov told the ipvnews web site in February. “(Ukrainian prosecutors) have gotten used to implementing orders from Moscow.”
