On March 18, Ruslan Shaveddinov was taken from the military unit where he was serving to an unknown destination. He was allowed to make a call while being escorted to the vehicle, but he did not know where he was being transferred and could not tell us.
For several weeks, there was no news from Ruslan at all. Naturally, we sent inquiries to his former unit and to the Ministry of Defense, but received no official replies. Only the commander of the unit where Ruslan had previously served called his mother and said that Ruslan had been transferred to the neighboring Unit 26894, located near the airfield in the settlement of Rogachyovo. That struck us as very strange—if so, why wasn’t Ruslan calling? Ever since the court ruled that there was no ban on his use of communications, he had been calling every week. We were convinced that in reality Ruslan had been taken somewhere deep into Novaya Zemlya, where there is no connection.
That is why we filed a new lawsuit with the Arkhangelsk Garrison Court, challenging the ban on Ruslan’s use of communications. The preliminary hearing took place on April 20. His lawyer was not allowed in—they said it was because of the coronavirus, even though they had previously assured us by phone that he would be admitted.
But most importantly, the court has now sent us the case materials, from which we can learn exactly what happened to Ruslan.
On March 18, he was taken from Unit 23662, where he served as a “driver-operator of a loading vehicle,” to Unit 26894 in Rogachyovo. There he was assigned as a “diesel mechanic at a radio-technical communications post” and that same evening was sent to Post No. 3. This post is 195 kilometers (about 121 miles) from Rogachyovo. There is no cellular service there.
We know that Ruslan had previously been threatened with transfer deeper into the island, where there would be no connection. Clearly, simply isolating him on Novaya Zemlya was not enough—as soon as we won the right through the courts for him to use a phone, he was immediately exiled even farther away.
We know that the entire special operation to abduct Ruslan is being overseen by Deputy Defense Minister and Russia’s chief political officer Andrei Kartapolov. Ruslan said that Kartapolov regularly called his former unit and demanded reports on what Ruslan was doing. We have no doubt that the idea of taking him even farther away, to deprive him of any communication at all, also came from Kartapolov. If you know anything about him, write to us through Black Box. It is completely anonymous.
The new court hearing on the ban on Ruslan’s communications will take place on May 14 on Novaya Zemlya.
Ruslan’s new address is 101300, Moscow-300, military unit 26894. It is listed in the documents. It is unknown whether letters will reach him, but it is worth trying.