A deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's national parliament, was a participant is a staged kidnapping by Ukraine's top security agency, the SBU, according to Ukrainian language news accounts.
Alexey Goncharenko reportedly was taken by a group of armed men in Kiev Thursday morning according to a news account in korrespondent.net. He was released unharmed only a few hours later
Goncharenhko is a member of Ukrainian president Petr Poroshenko's voting block.
According to numerous news accounts, the SBU received information that Goncharenko was the target of a plan to kidnap him, implemented by local separatists in the Odessa region. The articles say that video had surfaced involving a local government deputy in the village of Limanskoye in the Odessa region, identified as Aleksandr Kushnarev. Kushnarev is shown in the video discussing torture.
The plan, according to a separate news report which appeared in strana.ua, said that the SBU sponsored kidnapping was executed in order to deprive Kushnarev of a target.
News accounts say that Kushnarev's son was killed in the May 2nd, 2014 Odessa Trades Union Hall building fire, which Russian separatists claimed was a cover for brutal attacks against Russian speaking separatists by local groups tied to the then new Maidan Ukrainian government. Russian separatists claimed that most of the people killed in the incident were murdered, a charge which the government denies. It is stated in the articles that Kushnarev's plan was for vengeance for his son's death.
Yet another strana.ua report said that Kushnarev's son, identified as Gennady Kushnarev, at that time had been autopsied and the cause of death was said to be asphyxia caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. The autopsy also stated that Gennady was found in a pool of his own blood, which meant foul play could not be ruled out.
The Trades Union Hall fire is one of the galvanizing incidents which ethnic Russian separatists use as proof that the Ukrainian government intended to attack ethnic Russians in Ukraine.
According to the strana.ua report remarks by Goncharenko about the incident, which were characterized as flippant, angered Kushnarev. Goncharenko himself was not involved in the May 2nd, 2014 incident.
The strana.ua report said that Kushnarev planned to torture Goncharenko by using an acid attack, and by breaking his kneecaps. The report said that an Odessa local prosecutor, Oleg Zhuchenko, had ordered the arrest of three men including Kushnarev, all of whom were said to be involved in the planning of the kidnapping.
Instead of condemnation, the incident has received ridicule, some from deputies in Goncharenko's own voting block. Some of the responses has been to post production stills from obscure Ukrainian comedy films which depict a kidnapping.
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