Tonight, the first Ukrainian political prisoner, Nikolai Shiptur, finally left Russian territory across the border with Georgia. At the border, Russian law enforcement officers handed over to him his internal passport of a citizen of Ukraine, a certificate of release, which was issued by an illegitimate occupation authority on the territory of the occupied Crimea, where he was serving an illegal sentence, and another decree on the undesirability of staying on the territory of the Russian Federation.
According to available information, the Georgian border guards were informed about his possible crossing of the border, so they quickly identified him, allowed him into the territory of Georgia and provided him with the address of the Ukrainian embassy in Georgia.
Now the previously spread information that Shiptur is in the Ukrainian embassy in Georgia is not true: actually Nikolai arrived at the building of the Ukrainian embassy in Tbilisi today, but after the Georgian guards of the embassy suggested that he stands in line, he decided to postpone the visit to the embassy the next day, because he was very tired after a night journey of almost 1000 km.
On the initiative of the representative of the CTRC and with the participation of the structures of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the situation has now been resolved, and tomorrow diplomatic workers will begin to resolve the issue of providing Nikolai Shiptur with the proper documents for returning to Ukraine through third countries, since Georgia does not have a common border with our country.
Recall that Nikolai Shiptur was illegally detained by accomplices of the occupants in Sevastopol on March 9, 2014 for participating in an event dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the birth of Taras Shevchenko and subsequently sentenced to 9 years in prison, allegedly for illegal transportation of weapons and attempted murder of person in connection with the performance by this person of official activity or the performance of a public duty, committed in a socially dangerous way.
Before his arrest, he lived in Ivano-Frankivsk and participated in the events of the Revolution of Dignity in Kyiv. At the beginning of March 2023, the illegal 9-year term of Shyptur’s stay behind bars ended, but the occupiers did not release him, but forcibly transported him to the Temporary Detention Center for Foreign Citizens in the village of Sinyavskoe of Neklinovsky district of the Rostov region of the Russian Federation, where he was until recently.