Confession under FSB pressure: Save Ukraine Foundation describes detention of Ukrainian woman in Moscow

The Ukrainian woman detained by the Federal Security Service (FSB) in Moscow had come to Russia to collect her godson, but Russian security forces pressured her into "confessing" on camera that she wanted to take several orphans out of the Russian Federation.

Source: Mykola Kuleba, founder of the Save Ukraine rescue network, as well as the former Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children's Rights, in a comment to Ukrainian Radio, quoted by Ukrinform

Quote: "I will tell you who it is: a woman who went to pick up her godson, an orphan with an older brother of 26 who lives in Germany. He has a grandmother, who had come from Germany because they fled the war during the occupation, and the child remained a hostage.

This child was there [in Russia - ed.], and it was this woman who travelled to collect her godson, but the FSB arrested her at Domodedovo airport, detained her for two days, and exerted psychological pressure on her with threats and multiple interrogations."

Details: According to Kuleba, representatives of the Russian secret services threatened that the child would not be given to the woman, and she herself had to say a set text on camera or she would be imprisoned for 15 years.

"They handed the woman this text that said, yes, she had come and she wanted to take some orphans away, that she doesn’t know anything about them," said Kuleba. "In fact, everything had been written down and she was forced to memorise these words and say them. She stayed there in custody and was deported to Minsk, where they said: ‘Get out of here, go to Ukraine, you are being deported.’ She called the International Red Cross and asked them to take her as far as the border, but they refused."

According to the founder of the Save Ukraine Foundation, the woman reached the border on her own and was met there by representatives of the foundation.

Kuleba said that the woman has now been in Ukraine for a week, where she testified about everything, and that 10 days after her imprisonment in Moscow, "a post appeared in which she said everything under pressure from the FSB".

"At least she did not say she was an employee of the Save Ukraine Foundation in this video. Nevertheless, under pressure, they forced her to speak, and she admitted that it was under pressure from the FSB," he said.

Kuleba denied that the woman was an employee of the foundation.

Previously:

• The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti claimed that an employee of the Save Ukraine Foundation, an organisation that helps bring children back from Russian-occupied territories to Ukraine, had been detained in Moscow.
• However, Save Ukraine said that this was not true, and that the woman detained in the Russian Federation had been sent by the foundation to collect her godson.

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