Svetlana Davydova, a resident of Vyazma (Smolensk region), faces charges of high treason after she phoned Ukrainian diplomats to warn them that Russian troops may be en route to their country, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Thursday.
In April, 2014 Davydova contacted the Ukrainian Embassy in Moscow and told them that a military base near her home had been emptied. Military base No 48886 is a place of location of the 82nd radioradar brigade of Russia’s Chief Intellingence Directorate (GRU)
“She was in downtown on business and came across a servicemen from this unit in a minibus taxi. It was easy to understand that he is serving at the base: he was telling someone by the phone about his being sent on a mission and everyone could hear it,” Anatoly Gorlov, Sviatlana’s husband, said.
According to Gorlov, the man in the minibus said his comrades-in-arms and he were waiting for being taking to Moscow ‘in small groups’. They were ordered to be in civvies, he added. Then they were to go somewhere ‘on business’. Svetlana Davydova made a conclusion they would be sent to Donetsk and informed the Ukrainian Embassy of what she had heard.
In April, 2014 Philip Breedlove, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, stated that Russian troops ‘ready for invasion, were concentrating in Rostov region, near the border with Ukraine.
Mrs Davydova was arrested on January 21, 2015. She is currently being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo pre-trial detention facility.
“I saw our local police officer through a door viewer. He said our neighbours had reported some problem. We have seven kids, but some of them had left for school by the moment, and the rest were sleeping,” the husband says.
But instead of him camouflaged people broke into their flat. They were followed by a man who identified himself as Mikhail Svinolup, a special investigator from the Federal Security Service (FSB).
Svinolup told Davydova she was being detained over high treason case (Article 275 of Russia’s Criminal Code). She may face up to 20 years of imprisonment.
After searching the flat FSB officers seized all notebooks, a computer and a laptop. A day later the husband got informed of Sviatlana’s transferring to Moscow.
“Svetlana is against this war, but I wouldn’t say that we are active anti-war protesters or opposition activists. She used to be a member of the Communist Party, but then left to raise the kids. I don’t understand how the Federal Security Service learned of all this,” The Moscow Times quotes Gorlov as saying.
It was unclear when Davydova’s trial is set to take place. The FSB answered Kommersant’s request for information by saying they’d respond within a month.
www.belsat.eu/en, following Kommarsant, The Moscow Times
