The Shebekinsky District Court of the Belgorod Region announced the arrest of a local resident in a criminal case for illegal possession of weapons. As the Ashes publication notes, we are talking about 61-year-old volunteer Alexander Demidenko, who helped Ukrainian refugees.
The Astra telegram channel reported about the initiation of a case against Demidenko at the end of October (part 1 of Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code).
According to court materials, “a resident of the Shebekinsky district kept explosive devices at home.” . He was sent to the pre-trial detention center on November 1. At the meeting, Demidenko explained that he had indeed found explosives, but did not have time to hand them over to the police.
Demidenko disappeared at the Russian checkpoint “Kolotilovka” in the Belgorod region on October 17. Volunteers said that he brought an elderly woman with oncology to the border checkpoint, but at the parking lot two members of the terrorist defense team blocked his way and did not let him pass further. As a result, Demidenko found other escorts for the woman, but he could not leave the checkpoint himself, since his passport was taken away. Since then, he has not been in touch.
The volunteer’s wife, Natalya Vishenkova, wrote a statement about her husband’s disappearance, after which she was contacted by a police captain, who said that Demidov was “taken away by Akhmatova’s men.” A week later, it became known that Demidenko was arrested for ten days under an administrative protocol for drinking alcohol in prohibited places (Part 2 of Article 20.20 of the Code of Administrative Offenses), and then a criminal case was opened against him.
Vishenkova told Ash that on October 20, their home was searched, to which her husband was brought. Security forces seized Demidenko’s laptop and “some kind of rocket launcher or pistol” from his sock drawer. According to Vishenkov, there were “many bruises” on her husband’s body.
As the BBC Russian Service wrote, Demidenko 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. Since May last year, Demidenko said, up to 900 people had stayed at his house and needed somewhere to spend the night — the border checkpoint was often closed due to shelling.
The day before, 18-year-old Diana Maksimova disappeared at the Kolotilovka checkpoint, her older sister Victoria told Mediazona. The day before, Maksimova’s father received a call from her number from an unknown person, who introduced himself as an FSB officer and said that the girl “would not be allowed into Ukraine because of her Russian passport.” Since then, her phone has not been answered.