Shashenok Artur Stepanovich

On May 24, 2022, security forces detained 22-year-old local resident Damian Omelyanenko in Berdyansk. According to his mother, Tatyana Omelyanenko, Damian was held in custody for a month and released on June 22. He came out beaten, with broken ribs, having lost 10 kilograms. The security forces directly forbade him from leaving Berdyansk. On November 16, the FSB abducted Damian for the second time. The next day, his mother received threatening phone calls: they demanded he write a confession about preparing terrorist attacks and forced him to record a video, which they made public three months later, on February 9, 2023. "They made me say this on November 17 as well because they threatened that they would kill him. They wanted us to confess to these terrorist attacks that took place in Berdyansk," Tatyana told journalists. Since her son's abduction from home in November 2022, Tatyana has had no contact with her son. Tatyana Omelyanenko has lived and worked in Poland for many years. Her son Damian was living an ordinary civilian life in Berdyansk at the time of the occupation. When the city was occupied, he could no longer leave it due to fears that he would not pass through Russian checkpoints because of tattoos with military themes. On February 9, 2023, the FSB published footage of the detention of three local residents - Damian Omelyanenko, Arthur Shashenka, and Alexey Makarenko. The "report" claimed that the young men were involved in the murder of the deputy head of the Berdyansk traffic police, Alexander Kolesnikov, and the attempted murder of the commandant of Berdyansk, Colonel Artem Bardin, and the first deputy head of Berdyansk, Pavel Ischuk. In addition, the men were allegedly involved in the preparation of the murder of Oleg Boyko and his wife Lyudmila, as well as the explosion of the headquarters of humanitarian aid for the United Russia party on the territory of Berdyansk. According to the prosecution's version, the mother of Damian Omelyanenko, Tatyana Omelyanenko, who was in Poland, allegedly recruited people to carry out sabotage in Berdyansk and its surroundings, involving all three in "criminal activity."