SUBVERSIVE BOOK BY VASILY AKSENOV

Ukrainian security service SBU confiscated a book by the famous Russian writer Vasily Aksenov.The book Ostrov Krym – The Island of Crimea – was seized when the agents were searching the apartment of journalist Nadezhda Poliakova, correspondent for Russian information agency REGNUM. Mrs. Poliakova and all members of her family, including her underage son, were interrogated by the security police. The Ukrainian occupational regime was furious at the coverage by Mrs. Poliakova of a symbolic action by the youth organization of Proryv staged on the Chongarsky isthmus January 20. The young people had dug a trench on the isthmus to demonstrate that the Crimea was cutting itself off from the mainland Ukraine. They said they had been inspired by an episode from the Island of Crimea novel by Vasily Aksenov. The police took the book as evidence of an attempt to violate the Ukrainian sovereignty. It is not ruled out that the novel would be blacklisted by the Ukrainian regime as subversive literature.