Shufrychʼs arrest extended until May 18

The Shevchenkivsky District Court of Kyiv extended the arrest without bail of the MP Nestor Shufrych.

Ukrinform and Suspilne write about this.

Prosecutors requested that Shufrychʼs preventive measure be extended to 60 days in custody. The lawyers requested that this request be denied.

Shufrychʼs defense attorney Valeriy Bunyak requested any other preventive measure not related to detention — for example, house arrest.

Shufrych, who stated that there was no crime in his case and that the events in the indictment were incorrectly characterized, asked to reject the prosecutorsʼ request. He asked for any other preventive measure to allow him to work as an MP of Ukraine.

Shufrychʼs case

In September 2023, Nestor Shufrych was suspected of high treason. According to the investigation, he “closely cooperated” and carried out the tasks of former NSDC Secretary Volodymyr Sivkovych, an FSB agent who coordinated Russian agents in Ukraine.

One of Shufrychʼs main tasks, according to the investigation, was subversive activities in the information sphere: he constantly spread the Kremlinʼs narratives that the Ukrainian state is an "artificial entity", that Ukraine and Russia have a "single history", and that Ukrainians and Russians are "one people".

On September 15, the court remanded Shufrych in custody without bail. A number of medals, a collection of tunics, and a dozen Soviet awards were found at his home in the village of Kozyn in the Kyiv region. Babel’s sources in SBU also reported that during the searches, a document with a scheme of autonomy for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions was found in Shufrych’s possession. It provides for the renaming of these regions into “krais”, broad autonomy, holding elections, and the formation of separate “governments” and “parliaments”. The document, dated July 2014, is signed by Viktor Medvedchuk and Nestor Shufrych.

The Verkhovna Rada removed Nestor Shufrych from the position of Chairman of the Committee on Freedom of Speech.

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