BNS Dmitry Bulatov, the injured Ukrainian opposition activist who maintains to have been kidnapped and tortured in his country, arrived at the Vilnius International Airport from Riga shortly after midnight on Monday.
BNS
Dmitry Bulatov, the injured Ukrainian opposition activist who maintains to have been kidnapped and tortured in his country, arrived at the Vilnius International Airport from Riga shortly after midnight on Monday.
The 35 year-old Bulatov flew to Vilnius from Kiev via Riga. He was welcomed by a crowd of Lithuanian journalists and a few activists holding Ukrainian and Lithuanian flags, however, he refused to speak to them.
He was escorted through a side exit by the police, immediately boarded an ambulance and was rushed to the Vilnius University Hospital in the Lazdynai area of Vilnius.
Bulatov is the third Ukrainian opposition activist received by Lithuania for treatment.
Bulatov was missing from 23 January 2014mand was found in a heavy condition, beaten up, near Kiev on Thursday. He said the kidnappers battered him, cut his ear off and slashed his face. He wore a swathe over his injured ear upon arrival in Vilnius.
The man is known as the leader of the Automaidan movement, which organises protests involving vehicles outside Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s deluxe home in the outskirts of Kiev.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government accused him of fuelling hatred and put him under house arrest, however, foreign diplomats secured his release.
Reports about Bulatov’s torture caused a major outrage among Yanukovych’s critics.
For the past few months, Ukraine has been locked in mass protests against the administration that had claimed lives and, in the words of some observers, may spark a civil war.
The mass demonstrations started after Yanukovych refused to sign the landmark association and free trade agreement with the European Union (EU) during the Vilnius summit in the end of last November.
Naujienų agentūros BNS informaciją skelbti, cituoti ar kitaip atgaminti visuomenės informavimo priemonėse bei interneto tinklalapiuose be raštiško UAB „BNS“ sutikimo neleidžiama.
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