In Crimea, at the request of Interpol, Russian police arrested Vadim Pogodin, a leader of one of the gangs of the DPR, known under the call sign Kerch. Thanks to the hacktivists from the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance and CyberHunta, InformNapalm international intelligence community received additional information about Pogodin’s crimes from the report, sent to the Russian security services by the MGB DPR in 2014. But first things first.

Panic in the ranks of the DPR on plans to extradite Pogodin per Interpol request

The information that Russia plans to extradite Pogodin to Ukraine caused real hysteria among militants in social networks. Pogodin is charged with a number of serious crimes: torture of Ukrainian prisoners and the murder of Stepan Chubenko, a 16-year-old football player from Kramatorsk. In the summer of 2014, Pogodin’s thugs took Stepan off the train because he had a ribbon with colors of the Ukrainian flag on his backpack, tortured him, and then shot him. Pogodin himself was among the killers. The body of the murdered boy was given to his family three months later.

After committing crimes in the Donbas, Pogodin fled to Crimea. The accomplices of Kerch report that currently he is in a temporary detention facility in Simferopol, the issue of his extradition to Ukraine is being decided. Photographs of the written decision by the Yalta City Court dated June 21, 2017 appeared in social media:

Militants eyeing help at highest Russian levels,

but Pogodin is a Ukrainian citizen

At the same time, an accomplice of Pogodin, Sergey Dubinsky (call sign Khmury), who is suspected of committing a number of crimes, including participation in the downing of flight MH17, denied the possibility of extradition in his post on the social media website Odnoklassniki:

“I just flew from Crimea. No one will give him away, he will stay there for a maximum of 40 days and will be released. The decision on extradition will not be made. It’s good for Kerch to serve these 40 days, he is to blame, he deserves it by 200% … for the following: At the time when Crimea joined the Russian Federation, he lived there and has every right, like any Crimean citizen, to Russian citizenship. Okay, he went to Donetsk in April 2014. But since September, for THREE YEARS, could he have gotten off his ass and went to get a [Russian] passport? And now we are running about, making decisions, spending our energy, time and money.”(archive).

Sergey Dubinsky is a member of the Union of Donbas Volunteers, which is personally supervised by the Russian president’s aide Vladislav Surkov. The terrorist is trying to use connections at the highest level to prevent extradition, but the Ukrainian citizenship of Pogodin quickly hampers the issue.

Despite the Khmury’s assurances, militant posts in social networks speak of hysteria in their midst: the leadership of Russia betrayed them. In particular, one well-known militant, Yevgeny Tinyansky, said that this precedent “opens a Pandora’s box” and shows that former “militiamen” are not protected even in the territory of the Russian Federation.

Crimes recorded by “MGB of the DPR” and reported to Russian law enforcement agencies

In their discussions in social media, militants express allegations that the content of the investigation request was fabricated. But thanks to reports by the “MGB of the DPR from 2014, sent out from Daria Morozova’s  mailbox dashenka809@gmail.com,  hacktivists of the Ukrainian Cyber Alliance learned about another murder committed by Pogodin. According to the “MGB of the DPR” report, a commander of the militants with the call sign Kerch killed a local resident Alexander Kozaku, who had been detained at the Shiroky checkpoint. The man had been reported as missing and possibly was also tortured before his death. Although Russian law enforcement agencies already had information about the serious crimes committed by Pogodin since 2014, they did not take any action until the Interpol’s request was received.

Thus, this precedent signals to terrorists that they may be held responsible for the crimes they commit. Even Russia, the country for which they fought in the Donbas, will eventually start extradition of the DPR / LPR criminals at the request of Interpol. It is too early to speak about the success of this process, after all the necessary procedures have not been completed yet, but the process itself has been launched, and the detention of a terrorist in occupied Crimea is terrifying to the militants.

By Andriy Lysytsyn exclusively for InformNapalm.org

Translated by Svitlana Kemblowski

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