Kidnapping reports raise pre-referendum tensions in Crimea
Sevastopol (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine's Greek Catholic Church said a priest was seized by armed men from a chapel in Sevastopol on Saturday, shortly after a pro-Russian group reported one of its leaders had been abducted.
The two incidents are the latest in a series of kidnapping reports in Crimea, often involving activists for and against the referendum to be held on Sunday to decide whether the region should break away from Ukraine and join Russia.
Father Mykola Kvich, a chaplain with Ukraine's armed forces, was taken from a parish near the city cemetery, the Church said.
But according to local police, the priest had been detained but later released and the Russian state news channel Rossiya24 reported that 10 bullet proof vests had been found in his residence.
The Greek Catholic Church is particularly strong in the mostly Ukrainian-speaking west of the country and has been in favour of the Maidan protests that brought the current pro-West government in Kiev to power.
The priest's chaplain role "could be the reason for these actions by the armed self-defence groups in Crimea," said Father Lyubomyr Yavorskiy, an official in the Church's military chaplaincy department.
Earlier Saturday a leader in the pro-Russian group in Sevastopol -- home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet since the 18th century -- was reported kidnapped.
The Russky Blok party cited eyewitnesses as saying that its leader in the city, local assemblyman Gennadiy Basov, "was seized by nine people and taken away in a blue minivan".
Repeated attempts to contact Basov on his mobile went unanswered and police said they were "checking" a formal missing person report from the party.
Kidnapping reports are often hard to confirm because Ukraine's interior ministry no longer has authority in Crimea, and sometimes they appear to be part of an "information war" between two bitterly opposed sides.
Three activists from the Ukrainian pro-unity Automaidan group were reported missing after being seen at a Crimean-controlled checkpoint earlier this week.
Ukraine's former defence minister Anataoliy Gritsenko on Friday said on his Facebook page that his son Oleksiy was one of three pro-unity activists who had gone missing on Thursday in the Crimean capital Simferopol.
Gritsenko said his son had been supplying food, medicine and electricity generators to Ukrainian military bases on the peninsula, which are often surrounded by self-defence groups and Russian forces.
"I'm not arresting anyone but if people come here with bad intentions then law enforcement will deal with them," Crimea's pro-Moscow prime minister Sergiy Aksyonov told reporters on Friday, warning against "provocateurs" trying to blacken Crimea's name.
Three journalists detained earlier this week have been released and one of them, Olena Maksimenko, said the experience was "psychologically tough".
"They were trying to find out who we worked for and who was paying us," she said at a press conference.
Maksimenko said at one point she was throttled with a rope and punched in the face by a Cossack.
The journalists had been arrested at a checkpoint and taken to a military base in Sevastopol.
"They regularly took us out for interrogations, tried to get me to say I was some kind of spy," she said.
