MOSCOW: Russia has sparked a new human rights outcry by charging an elderly activist with fraud after she challenged Moscow’s denials that its troops are fighting in eastern Ukraine.
Rights activists said yesterday that the prosecution of 73-year-old Lyudmila Bogatenkova appeared to be punishment for her work as head of a group that has drawn up lists of Russian military casualties in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has denied Western claims that it has deployed troops to Ukraine to prop up pro-Russian separatists who have been battling Kiev forces for six months.
But multiple signs including secret funerals have emerged indicating Russian soldiers have been on the ground in Ukraine.
Activists complained that their requests to investigate reports of soldiers’ bodies being transported home, known as Cargo 200 in military jargon, have been stonewalled by authorities.
Bogatenkova, who heads a group probing army abuses in Russia’s southern Stavropol region, has been investigating the presence of Russian soldiers in Ukraine.
The activist, who is diabetic, was arrested at the weekend and had her home searched, her colleagues said. Bogatenkova, who lives in Budyonnovsk, a small town near Chechnya, has been charged with major fraud although the details are sketchy.
She faces up to six years in jail.
“This is an act of intimidation,” a member of the Kremlin’s own rights council, Sergei Krivenko, said. Regional police and investigators declined to comment.
The activist was released from detention on Monday after pressure from rights campaigners, including the head of the Kremlin’s rights council, Mikhail Fedotov.
Bogatenkova’s lawyer Andrei Sabinin said her health had sharply deteriorated “because of the stress” and she may be hospitalised. “She was without meds for a day,” he told AFP, adding she was now struggling with high blood pressure.
Fedotov, speaking to AFP, pledged to send members of the council, which advises President Vladimir Putin, to monitor her case. “We would like to be absolutely sure that this has nothing to do with her rights work.”
In August, Bogatenkova told AFP that a hospital in the southern town of Rostov, close to the Ukrainian border, was overflowing with the wounded.
AFP
