Russian 'rendition': Kremlin grabs opposition figure from Ukraine streets

Russian secret services have allegedly carried out a "rendition" by plucking a Russian opposition figure, Leonid Razvozzhayev, from a Kiev street in broad daylight last Saturday and transferring him to Lefortovo prison in Moscow.

The alleged kidnapping occurred just as Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was heading to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin on a variety of bilateral issues, including the price Russia charges Ukraine for natural gas.

The episode has Ukrainian human rights activists in an uproar over what looks like the completely illegal seizure of a foreign national on Ukrainian soil, and it has left many Russian experts fearful that the much-predicted, full-scale, no-holds-barred crackdown against the anti-Kremlin opposition has begun.

"When you think of the things that have happened in the past few months, it's already a changed environment. Many people are already in jail, and every day brings some fresh shock like this kidnapping," says Masha Lipman, editor of the Moscow Carnegie Center's Pro et Contra journal.

"Putin and his government are being drawn into a vicious cycle of repression against people who defy him. I can't see how this could be stopped now," she adds.

Ukrainian media reports say Mr. Razvozzhayev was applying for refugee assistance at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Kiev on Saturday. He left the building for lunch, and never returned, although he had left his things in the office.

"We are concerned that a person has disappeared just in the middle of the day, and nobody knows what happened and how," Oleksandra Makovska, spokeswoman of Ukraine’s UNHCR office, told journalists.

On Monday, it became clear that Razvozzhayev was in a Russian jail. The official Russian news agency RIA-Novosti reported that he had already "confessed to organizing mass disorder together with his boss and other opposition members" in a purported ten-page document that has not been made public.

Russian authorities argue that Razvozzhayev gave himself up voluntarily and penned a full confession about his part in a vast anti-Kremlin conspiracy. But footage posted by the Russian Internet journal LifeNews Monday shows Razvozzhayev being led from a Moscow police building Monday and pushed into a paddy wagon, audibly shouting to reporters that he had been kidnapped and tortured. 

In a blog written when he was already on the run, on Oct. 19, posted by the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, Razvozzhayev wrote: "If, in the nearest future, I should be arrested or anything bad happens to me, do not believe anything [officials] say about me. I am of sound mind, and sober memory, even if my living conditions at the moment are not the best."

1 | 2

Next