[Witness spoke in Ukrainian, interpreted as follows:]
The difficulties arose at the borders. At the Belarus border, for example, I was interrogated for two hours. Why am I going to Russia? For what reason? They had all sorts of questions for me.
Then there's Domodedovo in Russia. It's an airport in Moscow. It was very difficult there too, but I managed to get through quickly. I spent maybe an hour and a half there—maybe even less—before being admitted into Russia.
I think the most difficult point was Lazurne, the village where I was held for five days. For 24 hours I had a lie detector in a cellar. When we were let go with my son, that was the scariest part, because they did not want to let us go. They didn't want to let us out of Russia. We tried several checkpoints and failed. Then volunteers asked us to lie low for about a day and a half so nobody would know where we were. Then they told us when the car would be coming for us and that the car would take us to the border.
Indeed, a car came. My son an I went in the car to Pskov in the Smolensk region. That was where we were able to cross over to Latvia. They let us through, but before that, from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m, we had to stand there at the border—and we were extremely cold—because they didn't want to let us through. Then, at 6:00 a.m., they let us through, and at 9:00 a.m., when the guards changed, we were able to arrive at the Latvian checkpoint. That's where we had no more problems.
When Latvia let us in, all they asked was, "Where are you from?" and "Where are you going?" I said that I got my son from Russia and I'm taking him home to Ukraine. We had no more problems. They just wished us happy travels. In Poland, I also had no issues, even though my son had no foreign travel documents. He had an internal passport.
The scariest part was Russia, because Russia did not want to let us out. They maybe didn't want to let my son out because he knew too much. I just don't know.