In the morning of March 14 it was reported that activists Aleksandr Kravchenko and Leonid Kuzmin were detained by the Simferopol “law enforcement agencies” and the “self-defense force”. Besides them, a journalist of a polish TV channel Polsat News in Moscow Tomash Kulakovsky was also detained. They were sent to a “district police station”, where the journalist’s documents were inspected and he was released. Kravchenko and Kuzmin were detained for a couple of hours in the “anti-extremist center” and were issued a warning, Krym.Realii reports.
Aleksandr Kravchnko and Leonid Kuzmin were interviewed by the polish journalist in the Shevchenko Park in the morning of March 14. There they were detained by representatives of “self-defense force” because of “forbidden symbolism”: “I was detained in the Shevchenko Park. I came there to meet the journalists. The police and “self-defense force” officers told me I had forbidden attributes. I had a blue-yellow ribbon on me,” Kravchenko said, having noted that he didn’t know why Leonid Kuzmin, who didn’t have any Ukrainian attributes on him, was detained.
Tomash Kulakovsky was detained together with the activists that he interviewed. All of them were taken to the “district police station”, where documents of the journalist were checked and he was released and activists were sent to the “anti-extremist center”. “In the anti-extremist center we were handed a warning to behave well,” Kravchenko said.
As a reminder, some days earlier, Aleksandr Kravchenko, Leonid Kuzmin and one more activist Veldar Shukurdzhiev were detained during the event in honor of Taras Shevchenko’s birthday on Mach 10, also because of the Ukrainian symbolism. After that, on March 12 a trial was held, where they were sentenced to 40 hours of compulsory community service.
