Vasyl Vovk, an expert on state security issues and former head of the Main Investigation Department of the SBU Security Service of Ukraine, has said, as a person familiar with former chief of the Ukrainian "Officer Corps" center for the exchange of prisoners of war Volodymyr Ruban, he can confirm the latter wanted to leave Ukraine a long time ago.
Speaking to the Ukrainian online news outlet Obozrevatel, Vovk said that according to the law, Ruban and [Nadiia] Savchenko's actions were monitored, but there were no legal grounds to arrest Ruban since there was no new preventive measure that could restrict his movement.
As UNIAN reported earlier, former chief of the Ukrainian "Officer Corps" center for the exchange of prisoners of war Volodymyr Ruban, who is charged with an attempted coup, left the territory of Ukraine.
UNIAN memo. MP Nadiia Savchenko, along with Volodymyr Ruban who was detained on the contact line in Donbas, eastern Ukraine, with an arsenal of weapons on March 8, 2018, is suspected of plotting terrorist attacks at Kyiv's government headquarters and a coup d'état.
According to the investigation, the suspects planned to shell buildings in the center of Kyiv and assassinate the country's top officials, as well as seize the Verkhovna Rada's building. Also, law enforcers documented the fact of smuggling weapons from the occupied territory to Ukraine-controlled territory in November 2017 allegedly planned to be used in terror attacks.
On April 16, 2019, the court released Savchenko and Ruban from custody as the term of their arrest expired on that day without being duly extended on time.