Ex-Donetsk Oblast police chief says fears for his life, flees Kyiv (VIDEO)

The former police chief of Donetsk Oblast, who governing coalition lawmakers accuse of being in league with Kremlin-backed separatists, has left Kyiv citing concerns for his personal safety.

Korupciya.world reporting by Kyiv Post.

Ex-police major Roman Romanov on Aug. 3 told Novosti Donbas, a Donetsk Oblast news outlet that he doesn’t want to become a new “Buzyna,” referring to a Russophile journalist who was gunned down near his Kyiv residence on April 16.

Romanov claimed in the interview that he had started receiving threats after pro-presidential lawmaker Yehor Firsov, a native of Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast, noticed him working out a Kyiv gym and wrote about the encounter on his Facebook page on July 31.

Firsov said he was surprised to have seen him, assuming that Romanov had stayed in Donetsk or fled to Russia. The legislator also posted a video on YouTube recorded on March 3, 2014 inside the Donetsk Oblast Administration building when separatists first took it over less than two weeks after former President Viktor Yanukovych abandoned office and fled Ukraine.

Romanov is seen assuring the Kremlin-backed separatists in the session hall that the “Berkut (riot) police won’t come” and that “they’re currently at their base.” He also tells them that the “police is with the people” and before leaving the podium, he asks the crowd not to “maraud through the offices.”

Former Donetsk Oblast councilman Vitaliy Kropachev, who was there that day as separatists broke up a plenary session, told Fakty newspaper on July 14 that Romanov had asked the regional lawmakers and officials that were there to hear out Pavlo Gubarev, who had declared himself the new governor of the region, to the protests of those present.

Once they broke in, the separatists escorted the regional lawmakers and officials out of the building through a basement that leads to a café attached to the building.

Two days later on March 5, 2014 separatists re-took the government building after police evacuated it on grounds that a bomb threat had been made by phone. The same day Romanov resigned, according to Novosti Donbas, “because I saw that there was (public) distrust.”

He rejected accusations that he had “surrendered Donetsk” and of “treason.”

“I was born in Donetsk and I never betrayed the people of Donetsk,” Romanov said.

Romanov said he told Firsov in the gym that “history will set the record straight,” regarding his actions, the same phrase that Firsov cited in his social media post.

Following Firsov’s post on social media, lawmaker Anton Gerashchenko of the People’s Front party and a law enforcement parliamentary committee member described Romanov of harboring “suspicious loyalties” towards the “actions of separatists backed and inspired by Russian special forces.”

Gerashchenko said that after resigning, Romanov lived for a period in Russia-annexed Crimea, which the former police major confirmed to Novosti Donbas, stating “as all people do in the summer.”

The parliamentarian said he asked the State Security Service to conduct an assessment of Romanov’s work performance as Donetsk Oblast police chief.

“I also publicly appeal to the leadership of the State Security Service and General Prosecutor’s Office to examine the actions of all chiefs of police, security service, prosecutors, and heads of regional and local government bodies from the moment when deliberate anti-Ukrainian speeches were given in the southern and eastern oblasts of Ukraine, and provide a systemic account who remained loyal to their oaths, and who betrayed the (national) interests of Ukraine,” Gerashchenko said.

Romanov, 46, became Donetsk Oblast police chief on March 26, 2013.

Moscow-backed separatists took over the Donetsk regional government building a third time on April 6, 2014, and occupy it to this day.