Near the Russian checkpoint “Kolotilovka” in the Belgorod region, volunteer Alexander Demidenko, who helped Ukrainian refugees, disappeared, reported the BBC Russian Service, whose journalists interviewed the man last week.
Volunteers told the publication that on Tuesday, October 17, Demidenko brought an elderly woman with oncology to the checkpoint, but at the entrance to the parking lot in front of the border checkpoint, two members of the military defense blocked his road and did not let him pass further.
Then, according to the BBC's interlocutors, Demidenko began looking for other people who could help the woman cross a no-man's land about two kilometers long to the Ukrainian Pokrovka checkpoint in the Sumy region. A few hours later, the volunteer found those accompanying him, but was unable to leave himself, since the checkpoint officers took away his passport.
Demidenko stopped communicating at 16:30, and three hours before that he wrote in his telegram channel: “The most curious thing is that the defense and border guards were told that I was to blame for the queues at the border. Like, “he was financially interested.” In short, it is very convenient to make scapegoats of those who help.”
Eyewitnesses also told volunteers that they saw two cars with the symbols of the Russian Guard drive up to Demidenko, but there is no confirmation of this information.
As the BBC writes, Demidenko — he is a pensioner and lives in a private house in the Belgorod region. For more than a year, he helped refugees from Ukraine get to the Kolotilovka-Pokrovka checkpoint, the only functioning border crossing from Russia to Ukraine.