On 28 April 2014, Donbas’ patriotic volunteer defense battalion held an operation in which they thwarted an attempt to kidnap three journalists of Agence France-presse near Kransoarmiysk (Donetsk Oblast). The taxi driver, a previously convicted active member of the pro-Russian separatist movement from Krasnoarmiysk, was planning to take the group of journalists to a separatist base and later transfer them to the separatist stronghold city of Kramatorsk.
The taxi driver mentioned above was an active member of the Antimaidan movement and spent a long time in Maryinskiy Park in Kyiv, being basically one of the so-called hired ‘titushky’ (agent provocateurs used during Euromaidan by Yanukovych’s administration to intimidate and disperse the opponents of the government, and attack activists and media).
Members of the Ukrainian Volunteer Defense Force ‘Donbas’ delivered the malevolent taxi driver to the force’s basecamp for an educational conversation and later turned him over to the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) along with his phone full of photographs, Russian contacts, and numbers of his fellow accomplices.
The Ukrainian Volunteer Defense Force ‘Donbas’ state that they will continue their activities of safeguarding the freedom of the press and will thwart any attempts to kidnap people, and appeal to journalists that will be traveling in the region to closely observe the people that will be driving them, lest they end up being taken in the wrong direction.
Source: Ukrainian Volunteer Defense Force ‘Donbas’ FB page, edited by Alya Shandra
