Melitopol Mayor on his kidnapping: 7 hours with a sack over my head

Olha Hluschenko – Friday, 18 March 2022, 06:38

Ivan Fedorov, the Mayor of Melitopol recently liberated after being kidnapped by Russian troops, said that he spent 7 hours being driven around with a sack over his head, and was held in a detention centre.

Source: Ivan Fedorov, Mayor of Melitopol, in an interview for Nastoyaschee Vremya [Current Time]

According to Fedorov: "It’s quite an ordeal when you are driven around with a sack over your head for seven hours and you haven’t a clue where you are or where you’re going. The people who are driving you, you don’t trust them at all […]

I was in Melitopol, in the detention centre in Melitopol.

When they talked to me, whenever they needed something from me, there would sometimes be five, six, seven armed soldiers in my cell.

They did not touch me, but believe me: seven armed people in your immediate vicinity are enough to make a convincing argument.

In the cell next to mine, someone was being tortured and I could hear screaming; that was so psychologically oppressive it could absolutely be considered pressure, torture, and so on. So these six days were quite difficult.

[…] The [prisoner] exchange took place in the Vasylkiv district, near [the village of] Vasylivka. Roughly on the demarcation line which is now controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation."

Details: Fedorov said that to avoid harm he had to sign a number of documents. He clarified that those documents have no legal value.

In addition, Fedorov noted that the Russian conscripts that were his counterparts in the exchange were 18-19 years old.

Background:

• On 11 March, Russian occupiers kidnapped Mayor Ivan Fedorov. According to President Zelenskyy, he was being tortured in a basement to force him to record a video in support of the Russian occupation.
• On 12 March, during peaceful demonstrations against the Mayor’s kidnapping, Russian troops also kidnapped protest coordinator Olha Haisumova. On 13 March, Russian soldiers imprisoned Head of the Regional Council Serhiy Priyma, and attempted to kidnap Secretary of the City Council Roman Romanov.
• After Fedorov was kidnapped, the Russian occupying forces appointed a City Council representative from the Opposition Block party (a pro-Russian political party) as acting Mayor. She immediately urged the residents of Melitopol to not resist the occupiers. However, other representatives on the City Council called an extraordinary meeting and appealed to the Office of the Prosecutor General to immediately initiate proceedings against the acting Mayor for treason. They urged Melitopol residents to ignore her calls for collaboration with the occupiers.