Three days for escape: Crimean teacher accused by Russia of extremism fled to Kyiv

On Tuesday, August, 16, First Deputy Information Policy Minister Emine Dzhaparova reported that the former Crimean prisoner and Sevastopol citizen Yuriy Ilchenko escaped from the peninsula to the territory of the continental Ukraine. On Wednesday, August, 17, he held a press conference at IA «Ukrinform» in Kiev.

Ilchenko’s redemption story from the annexed Crimea has been already called «Shawshank redemption». He had worked as a teacher in Crimea. He was detained by the Federal Security Service operatives and the Central Processing Unit on July, 2, 2015, and put for 11 months into the predetention centre in Simferopol. The teachers-colleagues blamed him for publishing at his blog and social networks non-recognition of Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and about the war waging by Russia on the eastern Ukraine. Ilchenko was incriminated the Criminal Rules 280 and 282 of the Russian Federation Penal Code – «the public appeal for realizing the extremists’ activity and incitement of ethnic hatred». On June, 2016 he was put under the house arrest.

Nevertheless on the eve of celebrating the Russian Day Ilchenko decided to flee. He took his father’s jacket and mother’s stick. There were cameras around the house, so he disguised himself. He managed to cut off the bracelet. The blogger hitchhiked to the border. They traced him with dogs. He said that he was ready to die and not going back to the hell”.  He crossed the border through the forest full of land mines. As he got to the Ukrainian border, Ilchenko recalls, he fell to his knees and start kissing the Ukrainian land.

Later on Ilchenko’s parents managed to come from Crimea.

The Sevastopol Investigation Committee issued the missing eloped prisoner Yuriy Ilchenko on Wednesday, August, 17.

It is also issued on the department’s website that the eloped citizen of Ukraine was linked to crimes against the 11 years old girl and his pupil.  From the Investigation Committee’s perspective, Ilchenko committed with 11 years old girl the «sexual abuse actions».