MOSCOW – April 19 (ONLINE) Ilya Kiva, a former legislator from Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada belonging to the Opposition Platform – For Life party has said that he intends to request protection and political asylum in Russia.
“I officially state that nowadays in Ukraine, the government is carrying out a mass extermination of the Ukrainian people, violating all the norms of law, morality and common sense, committing acts of terror against civilians, physically eliminating ‘undesirables’, and cramming thousands of people who are subjected to torture and execution into the basements of Ukraine’s Security Service without charge or trial, while openly terrorizing the population, and releasing criminals from jails to commit war crimes! Given the unfolding situation, I have to say that I intend to officially ask for protection and political asylum in Russia,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on Tuesday.
The former lawmaker also stated that the Ukrainian authorities want to get rid of him. “The demand of the terror regime [of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky] to Moscow to hand me over as an opposition politician to settle scores proves only one thing – which they want to kill me.
Now, all their attempts to abduct me failed so now they are setting out on an unprecedented move. They are demanding to turn me over due to the necessity to conduct an ‘investigative procedure’ on charges of high treason – for publicly congratulating President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin on his birthday,” he explained.
On March 6, the office of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General charged the former legislator with infringing the country’s territorial integrity and high treason. Kiva reported that due to this political persecution he first left for Spain and then for Russia. On March 16, Ukraine’s National Bureau of Investigation placed him on a wanted list. On March 28, this agency charged the former lawmaker with “war propaganda and calls for a violent change of power.”.
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