According to the British newspaper “Daily Mail”, Anatoly Shari, 43, was arrested on the basis of an accusation of “high treason”, based on an international arrest warrant issued by the Internal Security Service of Ukraine, because of his pro-Russian ties.
He did not reveal the exact location where the Ukrainian blogger was arrested, but it is known that he has been residing in a town on the coast of Catalonia since 2016, when he requested political asylum.
The imprisoned blogger is a former investigative journalist, who claims he was targeted by a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine for his work exposing what he describes as “government corruption”.
The blogger’s critics say he has become a vocal defense of Putin since the start of military operations weeks ago, but Shari denies this.
Shari grew up in Ukraine, and in 2005 he became a journalist, and published a series of investigations between 2008 and 2011, in which he spoke about possible ties between the Ukrainian government and organized crime networks.
In 2012, he fled to Lithuania, where he was granted a 5-year residency, after he said he was being harassed because of his journalistic work.
Some claim that Shari published a map of Ukraine that does not include the Crimea region, which Russia annexed in 2014.
In addition, Shari described the overthrow of the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, as a coup.
Shari continued to do his journalistic work, whether through his YouTube channel or through the Telegram platform, and attracted the comments of millions of followers.
However, the Ukrainian authorities say that the arrested journalist worked “to stir up ethnic strife through social media.”
#arrest #Ukrainian #supports #Putin #Russian #attack #full #story