Artur Panov, a 19-year-old Ukrainian citizen who was widely reported to have died while being held in custody in Russia, is in fact “alive and well,” Ukraine’s consul in the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don Vitaliy Konarskiy has told Radio Svoboda.
“I can’t give details as we need to establish where the information on his death came from,” he said. “That information has not been confirmed.”
Panov was said to have died of heart failure. That information appears to have initially come from an April 30 post made on a blog on Russian website fontanka.ru by a user under the name of Joomla. No source is cited in the post, which, according to the site’s records, is to date the only one ever made by the author since their profile was created on April 29.
Panov, originally from the city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, was arrested in Russia’s Rostov Oblast in December 2015 on suspicion of planning a terrorist attack. Investigators say he crossed the border into Russia disguised as a refugee. He denies the charges made against him.
