Artist Daichi Yoshida, who was convicted of carrying and moving firearms across the state border of the Republic of Belarus will be released on May 22. Radio Liberty learned it from the family of the artist.
In 2016, Daichi was invited to the mango festival in Odessa. He purchased various pieces of weapons made before 1945 in a Kyiv antique store to use them as models.
On August 15, 2016 Daichi Yoshida was flying from Kyiv to Tokyo. The flight had a Minsk tconnection. According to the artist, the security services at the Kyiv airport checked and photographed all the pieces of weapons that were in his checked baggage and allowed him to fly. In Minsk, he was detained and already in April 2017 he was sentenced to 4 years 6 months of imprisonment. Now the term of his punishment was reduced to 1 year and 9 months of imprisonment.
In 2017, another foreigner was detained on the border with Belarus. The 24-year-old Frenchman Jolan Viaud was detained on September 21 at the border checkpoint Novaya Huta, during his trip to Ukraine. He was taken back to Homiel and placed in remand prison no. 3.
Customs officers say that Viaud crossed the border on foot and did not declare a cartridge. However, from the letter of Viaud sent from jail and published online it follows that Jolan specifically chose the “red corridor” to present things and a souvenir cartridge received from his Warsaw friend. The court acquitted Viaud, he returned to France.
