TOMSK, February 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russian traveler Konstantin Zhuravlyov who has been in captivity in Syria since October 2013 contacted his relatives in Tomsk, a city in Western Siberia, last weekend to say that the militants who captured him were threatening him with death, Zhuravlyov’s friend and fellow-traveler Yevgeny Kovalevsky wrote on his page in social networks on Tuesday.
Kovalevsky also posted a video recording of Zhuravlyov’s Skype conversation with his mother Nadezhda in which he said that the militants might phone her to tell that they would kill him if Russian authorities did not do anything to rescue him.
“But please, take care of yourself and remember that the Lord is with us even if they kill me,” Zhuravlyov told his mother in Skype.
The abducted Russian’s mother refused to talk to Itar-Tass because, as she said, she was not feeling well.
For his part, Oleg Melnikov, the leader of the Alternative movement which had tried to free Zhuravlyov, told Itar-Tass that they had managed to contact the militants who captured Zhuravlyov. “Their previous demand was release of 25 of their comrades from Syrian prisons. However, their current demands are unclear,” Melnikov said.
In October 2013, militants from the Liva al-Tauhid armed group captured Russian extreme traveler Konstantin Zhuravlyov allegedly for spying for official Damascus. The Russian crossed the Syria border from Turkey and planned to continue his journey to the Sahara.
A Syrian security service employee told Itar-Tass some time ago that the Syrian state could not be responsible for Zhuravlyov’s life because he had penetrated into Syria from Turkey without any official grounds, an offence which is punishable by imprisonment. However, considering a high level of relations between Russia and Syria, official Damascus promised to do everything possible to release the Russian.