The Pechersk District Court of Kyiv has chosen preventive measures for two military personnel and former law enforcement officers — Harnash and Lymar — who, according to the investigation, are implicated in the incident involving former commander of the 47th Separate Mechanized Brigade "Magura" Alexander Shirshyn. The court ordered pre-trial detention for both defendants until November 8, with the possibility of posting bail of 12.6 million hryvnias each. Thus, by mid-autumn, all three suspects in this high-profile case remain in custody with the right to post bail.
Essence of the Charge: Planting Drugs in a Car
The investigation suspects Harnash and Lymar of having possibly planted narcotic substances in Alexander Shirshyn's car. The case grew out of a major scandal that erupted in Kharkiv: police stopped the military man's vehicle and announced that narcotic substances had been seized from it. It was precisely this stop and the subsequent actions of law enforcement officers that became the starting point for the investigation, in which three suspects now figure — two soldiers and a former law enforcement officer, as well as the previously detained Alyev.
The Third Defendant and the Overall Picture of Detentions
On the eve, the court reviewed the preventive measure for the third suspect in the case — Alyev. He was also placed in pre-trial detention until November 8, with the bail amount for him set at 14 million 976 thousand hryvnias. In total, in the case of drug planting on the former "Magura" battalion commander, three people are in custody with the right to post bail, which indicates the scale and seriousness with which the investigation is approaching the verification of the version of a planned provocation.
Contradictory Data
Around the incident there exist two directly opposing narratives, and at present neither of them has been recognized as final. Alexander Shirshyn himself claims that drugs were planted on him during a check, and calls what happened a planned provocation. At the same time, the initial position of the National Police was that narcotic substances were seized when the car was stopped, and a number of publications presented the event in the context of possible drug trafficking by the former brigade commander. In response to these statements, an internal investigation into the actions of the law enforcement officers involved in the stop was appointed at the National Police. That is, the "planting/provocation" version and the "lawful seizure" version currently coexist in parallel, and the court, having chosen preventive measures for three suspects, has effectively locked in the investigation's working version of an attempted planting — however, final conclusions on the case have not yet been reached.
Procedural Status and What Comes Next
At present, all three suspects — Harnash, Lymar and Alyev — are in pre-trial detention until November 8 with the right to post bail (12.6 million hryvnias for the first two and about 14.98 million hryvnias for Alyev). The further development of the case will depend on the course of the investigation and the results of the internal investigation at the National Police: it is they who must confirm or refute Shirshyn's claims of a planned provocation. Until the corresponding procedural decisions are made, both versions of what happened remain publicly in force.
