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Public Chamber looks into battering of pro-Russian Ukrainian businessman

MOSCOW, March 31. /ITAR-TASS/. The Russian Public Chamber has received information about a Ukrainian citizen beaten up over his pro-Russian political views, the Chamber's press service said on Monday.

The entrepreneur, Oleg Zolotchenko, "is registered in Odessa, but lives and has business in Poltava (in Ukraine’s north-east),” the document said. “Zolotchenko owns a sports cafe, which used to broadcast sports events, including the Sochi Olympic Games. In his cafe, the owner hung out two flags - Russian and Ukrainian,” the press service said. “Apart from that, Zolotchenko was speaking against Maidan movement. Possibly, this was the reason behind the attack,” it added.

According to available information, late on March 12, six men wearing masks and armed with clogs and sub-machine guns first smashed his car, and then burst into his house and beat him up with gun-butts in front of his wife and daughter. The wife called the police, but they never turned up.

“After the attack, Zolotchenko began receiving threats, so he took the family and moved to Odessa,” the press service said. In connection with the incident, the Chamber’s coordinating center for assistance to Ukrainian residents offers Zolotchenko to consider a temporary asylum in Russia.

“Being Ukrainian citizens, the Zolotchenko family may enter the Russian territory without visas and other documents, and stay in Russia up to 90 days since the moment of the entry,” center’s expert Pavel Tolpegin explained. “Within this period of time, they are advised to appeal for temporary asylum to an authorized agency of the Russian Federal Migration Service. No registration is needed for that,” he said.

“If the Zolotchenko family get an asylum, they may stay on the Russian territory up to one year. In parallel, they may consider obtaining the Russian citizenship or acquiring a patent which gives a possibility for labor activity” in Russia, Public Chamber sources explained.