Oksana Meshko is victim of an attempted mugging (12/31/78)

Oksana Meshko is victim of an attempted mugging

NEW YORK, N.Y. - Oksana Meshko, a member of the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, was on November 3 a victim of what she described as a clumsy attempt by a provacateur to mug her, reported the press service of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council (abroad).

Meshko's report of the incident is being circulated in the "samvydav" and was made available to the council's press service by the Western representation of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

The 70-year-old woman said that at about 9:30 a.m. on November 3 she heard someone enter the corridor of her apartment building. The quiet behavior of the stranger led her to suspect him and she confronted him.

"I heard as someone very quietly, without making the slightest noise, entered the corridor. I quickly went out into the corridor. There stood a young, husky, unknown man, whose face did not posses Slavic features," said Meshko.

When she asked him who he was looking for, he replied in Russian "Nastia Yakovlev." Meshko told him in Ukrainian that such a person does not live there, but that an Oksana Yakivna lives there. The stranger told her that he is from Moscow and that it is important for him to talk with her. When she asked him whether he was an investigator, he replied that he was.

"He resembled one of those persons who worked for the penal authorities," she said.

Meshko asked the stranger to wait a moment while she entered her apartment to get her key, but the young man forced his way into her quarters and closed the door behind him. She said that he immediately drew a revolver from his pocket and aimed it at her chest.

"Give me your money," he screamed out and grabbed her by the arm.

Meshko summoned her roommate, Nina Honcharenko, to run for help.

Her roommate startled the intruder who let go of Meshko's arm. Both women quickly dashed out the window to get help.

The intruder was left in the apartment alone for a few moments. Meshko said that he could have taken several items of value, such as the package she had prepared for her son, Oleksander Serhiyenko, a political prisoner.

Meshko said that the intruder did not touch anything, except for a few papers on her desk. He calmly then left the building, got into a taxi and departed. Meshko said that four witnesses saw him leave.

Meshko said in her report that she found it odd that the taxi driver did not respond to her and her friend's calls for help, but merely drove off on the instructions of the intruder.

"From my window I could not see any persons standing on the sidewalk and I left my apartment onto the peaceful Verbolozna Street, which, since its creation in 1945, had never experienced an attack on its residents. What was even more surprising to me was that the attempted robbery was aimed at me, instead of persons considered to be richer than me," said Meshko.

All the residents were shocked by the incident, and Meshko asked a neighbor to call for the police.

Meshko said that ever since she became a member of the Ukrainian group, she has been the victim of this sort of harassment. She said that her visitors are always searched and so-called watchmen from nearby garden houses frequent her neighborhood.

"Soon, in reply to the distress call, the police car arrived. The local policeman was not inside, but a senior inspector from the penal investigative unit of the Podilia ROVD, Capt. Dytiuk, sat in the car," said Meshko.

When Meshko told the investigator about the revolver, Capt. Dytiuk smirked and tried to refute her story. He showed her a cigarette lighter and asked her whether she saw something resembling that. Meshko told him that she had successfully completed a military training course and is well aware of the difference between a revolver and a cigarette lighter.

Capt. Dytiuk noticed in Meshko's report that she asked him if he was an investigator. He pressed her for an explanation why she asked him that question.

Meshko said that since her son is a political prisoner and she writes many appeals in his defense, she is often questioned by investigators. Seeing an opportunity to again ridicule her statement, Dytiuk said that maybe she was accosted by a political prisoner friend of her son.

Dytiuk took down her report and the reports of several eyewitness and promised to return to question her again.

After he left, Meshko wrote that she was "left alone" with her "sad thoughts."

In October 1976, soon after the creation of the Kiev group, Rudenko's home was vandalized. Two years later she was attacked at gunpoint, she thought.

"I consider the attack against me as a threat against all the members of the group and the organization, itself. Eight members of the group are still free and we do not intend to capitulate in the face of fear," wrote Meshko.

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