The location of Crimean Hennadiy Afanasyev, convicted in Russia for organizing terrorist acts in Crimea, has been unknown for over a month now, said his mother Olha. Her attempts to learn where Russia sent him were unsuccessful, the RFE/RL Crimean desk reports.
“The public oversight committee will try to call the [prison] colonies. They won’t tell me, that’ for sure, I have already tried,” she said.
The last time Olha heard news of her son was over a month ago. He was in the Russian Republic of Komi waiting to be transported to a colony.
Hennadiy Afanasyev was a witness in the case of Ukrainians Oleh Sentsov and Oleksanda Kolchenko, who were sentenced in Russia to 20 and 10 years respectively. During the court hearings Afanasyev retracted his testimony, claiming that he had been tortured.
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Starting at 10 a.m. today Ukraine has been pumping Russian gas into its underground storage locations, Ukrainian Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn has said. Ukraine has tried to limit its use of Russian gas, but is still incapable of eliminating it completely, RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service reports.
According to Demchyshyn, Ukraine's Naftogaz has requested 114 million cubic meters of gas from Russia a day.
Within 20-30 days he expects Ukraine to increase its reserves from 15.8 billion cubic meters to 17 billion-18 billion.
"The funds reserved for Gazprom allow for transfer of 2.2 billion cubic meters," he said.
Ukraine's gas consumption increased in September from 40 million cubic meters to 65 million a day, said the minister.
"Without Russian gas it is impossible to go through the heating season," Demchyshyn said. He explained that it would be possible only if Ukraine were to have a very warm winter, if the consumption decreased due to energy saving measures or if industrial production declined.
"We hope that next year it will be much easier to go through winter and we will be able to go through it without Russian gas," he said.
U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen has said that Ukraine shouldn't expect Washington's decision on whether to arm it in the near future.
"I was among those in the Congress who supported providing Ukraine with defense weapons. As you know, the Congress and [presidential] administration had their differences with regards to this issue. I don't think that in the near future there will be a solution that would be different from what we have now," she said in a comment to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.
Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has apparently reached out to voters in upcoming local elections in Ukraine through leaflets spotted in Dnipropetrovsk.
Yanukovych is campaigning for the Opposition bloc, many of whose members are former allies or former members of his now liquidated Party of Regions.
"We will win!" says the leaflet. "I am doing everything possible to return to my people soon, so that again we can be building a happy and rich Ukraine."
Yanukovych’s regime fell in February 2014 after the Euromaidan protests. He then fled to Russia, where he currently resides.