Russia has freed Oleksandr Shumkov, a former Ukrainian soldier and a member of the Right Sector nationalist movement, and deported him to Ukraine after holding him in custody for three years.
Shumkov crossed over onto Ukrainian territory at the Bachivsk border crossing point in Sumy Oblast in northeastern Ukraine. He was met by his parents and aunt, who had traveled all the way from their home in Kherson Oblast, near Russian-occupied Crimea, to meet him.
In 2018, a court in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast sentenced Shumkov to four years in prison for being a member of Right Sector, which Russia regards as an “extremist organization.”
Shumkov was immediately transferred from a pre-trial detention center to a prison colony in Tver Oblast.
During his confinement, Shumkov complained about beatings by prison guards. In October 2019, he launched a month-long hunger strike.
According to the prosecution, Shumkov was a member of Right Sector from 2014 until 2017. But during his court testimony, the former soldier said that information was not accurate.
Shumkov said that he had been a bodyguard of Right Sector leader Dmytro Yarosh, but had quit in June 2014, months before Russia labeled Right Sector an extremist organization and banned it.
In November 2014, he left the political force to join the Ukrainian army, he said. After that, he served in his native Kherson Oblast.
Then, on Aug. 17, 2017, he disappeared. One month later, on Sept. 29, news broke that Shumkov was in Russia’s pre-trial detention center in Bryansk, roughly 170 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.
On Aug. 23, the Ukrainska Pravda news site reported that Shumkov had legally crossed the border with Russia in a car, according to unnamed sources in the State Border Service.
Shumkov’s family and friends believe that there is no way he went to Russia willingly.
In his address to the court, Shumkov said that he had been offered to smoke marijuana and passed out. When he regained consciousness, he was already in Russia.
According to the Ukrainian parliamentary commissioner on human rights, Shumkov is just one of at least 130 Ukrainian political prisoners held in Russia.
