Native of Kherson Natalia Areshchenko, who after the liberation of the regional center moved to Russia, disappeared after being detained by Russian border guards at Sochi airport. The woman was detained on August 3, when she was returning from a trip to Kherson.
This is reported by Russian media.
It is noted that Natalia and her husband Yuriy took a pro-Russian position after the start of the full-scale invasion. During the occupation of Kherson they supplied food to local stores from the territory of the so-called “DPR” and “LPR”. When the Russian army in November 2022 withdrew to the left bank of the Dnipro, the family decided to move to Krasnodar. There they obtained Russian citizenship, but Natalia’s grandmother remained in Kherson.
According to the publication “Caution, News”, in June this year Natalia decided to go to Kherson to care for a relative who was to undergo surgery. She returned home via the territory of Ukraine. On August 3, during passport control at Sochi airport, FSB officers confiscated her phone and bank cards. Late in the evening Natalia called her husband from an unknown number and reported that she was “being forced to confess to something she did not do.” After that, contact with her disappeared.
Law enforcement informed Yuriy that Natalia was arrested for 11 days for “disobeying a lawful order of a serviceman.” The family’s lawyer established that the woman was allegedly detained for not presenting a passport at the border. On August 14 the arrest term ended, however she was not released from the temporary detention facility.
At the Interior Ministry Yuriy was told that FSB officers had taken his wife to Volgograd “for the conduct of operational-investigative actions.” At the same time, the agency claims that no checks regarding Natalia are being carried out.
At the end of August the man filed a report about his wife’s disappearance, but she was not declared wanted. According to Yuriy, one of the police officers in Sochi said that a criminal case had allegedly been opened against Natalia and advised him “not to interfere.”
Yuriy repeatedly appealed to the FSB, the prosecutor’s office and other authorities, but received no responses. In the Investigative Committee he was told that the woman was “released after serving her sentence.”