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Serhiy Litvinov, a political prisoner who was jailed in Russia on charges widely believed to be fabricated and eventually transferred to a penal colony in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, is now free.
This was reported by Hromadske who had a journalist at the prison when Litvinov was released on July 13, 2019.
On July 12, 2019, Ukrainian President Vololymyr Zelensky issued a pardon for Litvinov which called for his immediate release.
After spending five years of an 8.5 year sentence in Russia, Litvinov was then transferred to a Ukrainian prison in Kharkiv where he spent an additional four months behind bars.
The initial charges brought against him by Russia were questionable. While a member of the Dnipro-1 battalion, he was charged with murdering four people in Luhansk region but those people did not exist.
Upon his release, he spoke to the media about his treatment while in Russian prison, treatment he called torture.
“I was tortured by the investigators, prosecutors and high-profile people close to Moscow and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. I want to say that Putin is not a nice person. They tortured, mocked and humiliated me anything you could imagine. I did not see anything positive in there, everything was painful and cruel,” Hromadske reports Litvinov as saying.
In an exclusive comment to Hromadske, Litvinov said that his plan is to return home. He lives in the village of Komyshne, Luhansk region, just 22km east of Stanytsia Luhanska where the demarcation line between the Ukrainian government-controlled and uncontrolled areas lies.
