Russian opposition campaigner Leonid Razvozzhayev did not request political refuge in Ukraine, said chief of the Ukrainian State Migration Service Mykola Kovalchuk.

"Razvozzhayev did not contact us. I have only learned from the press that he had visited an office that deals with Israeli refugees," he told the media in Kyiv on Wednesday.

It emerged on October 22 that Razvozzhayev had been arrested and that, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, he had allegedly turned himself in to the authorities. Meanwhile, Razvozzhayev told rights activists that he had been caught by unidentified persons in Kyiv, where he had applied for political refuge. He said he was tortured into giving a confession and brought to Moscow, where the Basmanny Court ordered his arrest.

Defense attorney Mark Feigin, who visited his client at the Lefortovo prison, said on October 25 that Razvozzhayev had not turned himself in to the police and that his confession had been made under pressure.

Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin earlier said that Razvozzhayev had not filed any official complaints about torture. But Markin pledged that all claims about the offenses allegedly committed against Razvozzhayev would be investigated.

The New Times magazine later published the last page in Razvozzhayev's testimony which said that he had decided to return to Moscow from Ukraine on his own and that he had received $3,300 from Georgian politician Givi Targamadze.

Targamadze was one of the key figures in the documentary, Anatomy of Protest-2, shown on NTV, about the Russian opposition parties' alleged preparations of mass disturbances. Criminal inquiries were started after the film against several opposition activists, among them Razvozzhayev and Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov.