KIEV, November 22./TASS/. Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights Valeria Lutkovskaya has instructed her team to establish the whereabouts of the Russian servicemen detained on the border with Crimea and to check conditions of their confinement, her representative told Tass on Tuesday.
"As soon as news came about detention on the administrative border with Crimea, the ombudswoman gave instructions to immediately establish their whereabouts, specify all details and monitor the confinement conditions," Mikhail Chaplyga said.
He said Lutkovskaya also urged a personal meeting of her representatives with the detained Russians "to get information as to whether their rights were violated when they were being detained and at the present moment".
He said "special attention will be also paid to their right to defense". Chaplyga said Ukrainian ombudswoman’s representatives were planning to visit the arrested servicemen within the next few days.
Earlier in the day, Russia’s human rights commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova said she would send a request to her Ukrainian counterpart Valeriya Lutkovskaya asking her to assist in releasing two Russian servicemen abducted by Ukraine’s special services in Crimea.
"I have prepared a request to Lutkovskaya, the human rights ombudsman of the Ukrainian Rada, asking her to visit our servicemen and facilitate their soonest release," Moskalkova told reporters.
Late on Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry reported that two Russian servicemen had been abducted by Ukraine’s Security Service in Crimea and taken to Ukraine’s Nikolayev region.
"At about 13:00 Moscow time on November 20, officers of Ukraine’s Security Service illegally detained two Russian servicemen: warrant officer Maxim Yevgenyevich Odintsov and junior sergeant Alexander Vyacheslavovich Baranov and took them to the territory of the Nikolayev region in Ukraine," the ministry said.
This information was confirmed earlier on Tuesday by a representative of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. "Officers of the Ukrainian Security Service used substitute persons to entice warrant officer Maxim Odintsov and contract service junior sergeant Alexander Baranov into the Dzhankoi checkpoint allegedly for giving them attested documents of receiving higher education at Ukrainian higher educational institutions," the fleet’s representative said.
Shortly after Odintsov and Baranov left Russia’s territory, the servicemen were detained by representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service and brought to Ukraine’s Nikolayev Region, he added.
Sources from the Ukrainian Security Service said the military are accused of desertion and treason.
Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) head Vasily Gritsak confirmed on Tuesday that Alexander Baranov and Maxim Odintsov have been arrested for two months with the possibility of bail.