Donetsk University professor held in Russia for eight years returns to Ukraine

The Media Initiative website reported Shelest’s release, according to Ukrinform.

“Among those released is teacher Oleksandr Shelest from Donetsk,” the report says.

Earlier, this community stated on its Facebook page that the computer science teacher at Donetsk National Technical University was detained by militants on September 13, 2017.

At that time, unknown individuals came to the Donetsk apartment where Oleksandr lived with his mother and asked the man to come down to the car, saying that they needed to identify someone. Then they returned to the apartment, seized all the equipment, and arrested Shelest.

Later, the teacher’s parents learned that their son was accused of “espionage.”

During the so-called “trial,” Shelest was held in a pre-trial detention center, and on May 17, 2019, he received a “sentence” of 11 years in prison. He was then transferred to Colony No. 32 in the city of Makiivka.

Today, after almost eight years of illegal imprisonment in Russia, Shelest was released and returned to Ukraine, having endured all the torture and hardship.

As reported, on August 14, 84 military personnel and civilians were returned to their homeland. The youngest released prisoner is 26 years old, and the oldest is 74, of which he spent the last seven years (since 2018) in a Russian prison.

One of the released prisoners spent 4,013 days in captivity — he was captured in Donetsk Oblast back in 2014. Among those freed are three women from Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. One of them is a primary school teacher who was imprisoned in 2019. A 27-year-old man, who was illegally imprisoned by the occupiers in 2016, also returned home. At that time, he was only 18 years old.

In addition to civilians, defenders from the Mariupol garrison, Navy soldiers, and State Border Service officers also returned home. Ten officers were freed from captivity.

First photo: Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War