No Russian teachers have been detained on the territory of the Kharkiv region, liberated by the Ukrainian army, reports TV network Current Time, citing the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
“According to the information of the Prosecutor General's Office, Ukrainian law enforcement officers did not detain Russian teachers on de-occupied territories of the Kharkiv region,” said Ihor Belousov, head of the Counteraction of Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict Department.
Furthermore, the TV network’s sources in the prosecutor’s offices of the Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions claim that no Russian teachers had been detained there.
Initially, on 12 September, Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk said that Russian teachers, who had arrived in Ukraine to teach the Russian school curriculum, were detained in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories liberated by Ukraine’s Armed Forces. She told the Strana outlet that they would be tried under the article on violating the rules and customs of war.
“We have warned Russian citizens that had agreed to come into Ukraine’s territory and conduct activities banned by [Ukrainian] law many times,” Vereshchuk said.
At the same time, Russia’s Education Ministry denied all reports about the detention of Russian teachers in the Kharkiv region. “All teachers that had previously gone to work in the liberated territories are currently in places controlled by the Russian military and the military of the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics,” Russia’s Minister of Education Sergey Kravtsov stated.
The Russian Ministry of Education clarified that, starting from 1 September, around 90 schools had started operating in the Kharkiv region. “Local teachers work [in the schools],” the ministry’s press service said.
Nevertheless, on 13 September, Head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Alexander Bastrykin ordered a criminal investigation into the alleged detention of Russian teachers by Ukraine’s soldiers.
