I lied about getting cash from US during torture: Ukrainian activist
KYIV A Ukrainian activist who left the country after he was abducted said on Thursday his Russian-speaking captors cut off part of his ear and “crucified” him to force him to say he was an American spy.
“They nailed me to the wooden door, I was kneeling and after that they took sticks and started beating me,” Dmytro Bulatov told reporters in a hospital in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, where he is receiving medical treatment.
“I told them that the American ambassador had given me $50,000,” he said. “It was so scary, it was so painful that I asked them to kill me. I lied because I could not stand the pain.”
He accused his abductors, who he believes were Russian secret service agents, of cutting off part of his ear.
Even as Ukraine’s main opposition leaders meet with the authorities to try to resolve their long-running standoff, one influential and unrepentant voice stands out — that of far-right paramilitary leader Dmytro Yarosh.
“The revolution will win in Ukraine!” the shaven-headed 42-year-old said in a rare interview at his field headquarters — an entire floor in an occupied trade union building on Independence Square in central Kyiv.
Yarosh’s masked and helmeted followers — some armed with guns, others wielding baseball bats — patrol the barricades around the protest tent camp and were in the frontlines of clashes with riot police, throwing Molotov cocktails.
“We got things moving, we breathed life into the revolution,” said Yarosh, himself a former Red Army soldier who claims he is no fascist but a nationalist defending Ukraine against foreign domination — whether from the EU or Russia.
Getting to Yarosh is no easy task as he is jealously guarded by the 500 mostly young members of his group Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), who sleep in the corridors of the base next to their improvised gear like a ragtag army.
“The government is collapsing and is weak. We can push it to the end,” said Yarosh, who had a bullet-proof vest slung on the chair in his office and a thin camping mattress on the floor.
Meanwhile, European lawmakers called on Thursday for targeted EU sanctions against the Ukraine government and those implicated in violence against pro-EU demonstrators.