Lawyers visiting wounded Ukrainian prisoners of war, seamen Andriy Eider and Andriy Artemenko, in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina facility, have said both are recovering from injuries suffered when Russia attacked their naval ships near the Kerch Strait on November 25, 2018.
“I again visited my client, Andriy Eider, a Ukrainian prisoner of war, who is currently being held in the pretrial facility in Moscow… As for his health, Andriy is recovering – he can bend his knees and they have removed the stiches… The doctors decided not to remove the shrapnel out of the leg because the fragment is very small…,” lawyer Alexandra Markova said on Facebook.
She said Eider expressed concern about the fact that he would be transferred to a different pretrial facility, the Lefortovo pretrial detention facility, before he could finally recover.
Markova said she visited Eider to congratulate him on his birthday, December 20, when he turned 19 years old.
Lawyer Maria Kurakina, meanwhile, visited the prisoner of war Artemenko in Matrosskaya Tishina.
“He feels better, his left hand is still bothering him. The shrapnel wound makes itself felt. There is a shrapnel fragment in his wrist. His hand function is returning slowly, but noticeably. His vision has also returned,” Kurakina said on Facebook, adding that Artemenko told her he received letters from relatives and friends, from volunteers, and letters of support from Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia and the United Arab Emirates.
Kurakina said she told Artemenko to be calm and resolute.
“The most important thing is to show firmness and perseverance. Our team is one. We all support each other. We will do everything we can in our case to bring the sailor prisoners of war back home as soon as possible,” she said.
As earlier reported, on November 25, 2018 Russian border guards captured the Yany Kapu tugboat and two small armored artillery boats of Ukraine’s Naval Forces. Ukrainian sailors on board were taken prisoners and transported to Moscow on November 29.
On December 3, Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer for one of the sailors, said Russia would charge the seamen with illegally crossing Russia’s border.
