My name is Nina Belyaeva, I am a representative of the national liberation movement Eastern Slobozhanshchyna
First of all, I want to thank the organizers of this event for the opportunity to discuss an extremely important issue.
I am engaged in collecting cases of ethnically motivated persecution of Ukrainians in the territory of Russia with Russian citizenship by birth.
Some prisoners are convicted only because they are Ukrainians.
Among them is Oleksandr Dymitrenko, a resident of a Ukrainian village in the Voronezh region, who led an ethnographic public on a social network and spoke openly about his Ukrainian national identity. He received twenty-two and a half years of imprisonment.
Anton Osypenko, a resident of Voronezh, said at one of the rallies that he is Ukrainian. He received nine years and ten months of imprisonment.
Natalya Romanenko from Khabarovsk, the former head of the Ukrainian community “Krynytsia”, and her husband have been in a pre-trial detention centre for more than eight months on a fabricated criminal case.
Terrible accusations are made against Ukrainians under general criminal articles, such as treason, terrorism, sabotage, and possession of explosives. This makes it possible to keep the criminal case secret and, as a rule, cuts off the persecuted from the help of well-known Russian human rights organizations that receive support from the European Union and the United States.
If a Ukrainian managed to escape from Russia before he was imprisoned, he often gets stuck in a visa-free country. This is because prosecution for terrorist articles usually interferes with obtaining a humanitarian visa and significantly complicates obtaining refugee status.
Unfortunately, Western countries usually do not understand where Ukrainians with Russian citizenship by birth, who often do not have close relatives in Ukraine, come from.
It is necessary to explain that:
Eastern Slobozhanshchyna is a Ukrainian ethnic land, most of which is currently within the borders of Russia. Parts of the territories of Voronezh, Belgorod, Kursk and Rostov regions.
Zeleny Klin, Malynovy Klin, Zhovtiy Klin and Siryy Klin – are territories to which Ukrainians were resettled en masse.
We are currently preparing a list of citizens of the Russian Federation persecuted for their Ukrainian national identity and a regional list of political prisoners. And we hope that these people will get into the next exchanges between Western countries and Russia.
