The organization of Afghan war veterans named No One Except Us confirmed that its leader Oleksandr Kovalev is being charged with helping the officers of the Berkut riot police to escape from from Kyiv and destroying their weapons after the flight of Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014.
"They've slapped charges against Oleksandr Kovalev," the organization's spokesperson Yuriy Slinyavchuk told the TV channel 112 on 27 July, and went on to say that "everyone who could, including MPs and former officers" have been involved in taking Berkut out from Maydan at that time,
Slinyavchuk alleged that Kovalev is being persecuted because No One Except Us was involved in the organization of recent protest rallies against the hike in utility tariffs.
Someone seems to be trying to discredit our organization, he said.
Meanwhile, MP Volodymyr Aryev, BPP, posted on his Facebook page the photos of persons, who are suspected of smuggling Berkut out of Kyiv and the following destruction of hundreds of guns that had been used to slay the Heavenly Hundred.
"The investigation has a version that, at the request of the bloody Interior Minister Zakharchenko, Berkut killers have been taken out of the revolutionary Kyiv by the two Afghan veterans from No One Except Us - Chobitko and […] Kovalev, a separatist and the chairman of the city organization of No One Except Us," Aryev wrote.
On 14 July, Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko told the media about the searches at the homes and offices of persons suspected in the destruction of Berkut's weaponry. He said destroyed rifles and machine guns were discovered in one of Kyiv lakes in 2015. The weapons have been cut and dropped into the lake by a group of individuals, whose leader was being investigated, Lutsenko said.
"Unfortunately, this man who we believe was controlled by [former interior minister] Zakharchenko smuggled the "black hundred" out from Kyiv, destroyed their weapons and drowned it, was at Maydan with us," the prosecutor general said.
Afghan war veterans were active participants in the Dignity Revolution in early 2014.