Kyiv won't extradite roofer who painted star on Moscow skyscraper in Ukrainian flag colors - interior minister
Ukraine has received an Interpol request for extraditing Hryhoriy Kyrylenko, a roofer known by the nickname Mustang Wanted, to Russia but will decline it, Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said.
"An inquiry from Russian Interpol has come. Have to turn it down and disclose secret information. Mustang Wanted has returned to Ukraine and has been awarded with a personal weapon for excellently carrying out his mission," Avakov said on Facebook on Friday.
Avakov called on the Russian Interior Ministry "not to waste time and not to write us letters concerning Mustang."
"Just take care of the color of the Kremlin stars," he said.
It was reported earlier that a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag was hung and the upper half of the gold-color star painted in blue at the top of a Stalin-era tower building in Kotelnicheskaya Embankment in Moscow early in the morning on August 20.
Later the same day, police detained four young people with alpine gear identified as Alexander Pogrebov, Alexei Shirokozhukhov, Anna Lepyoshkina and Yevgeny Korotkov. They are suspected of being involved in the tower incident. On August 21, the Tagansky District Court placed all four under house arrest until October 19.
The suspects, who are known to belong to the Moscow BASE jumping community, have denied their involvement in covering the star with paint and hanging the Ukrainian flag. They claim that their presence at the scene was a mere coincidence and that they in fact appeared there to jump from a part of the roof that is several dozen meters below the spire with the star.
On August 22, a man referring to himself as a Ukrainian citizen named Hryhoriy (nicknamed Grisha the Mustang Wanted) posted a message on social-networking Web sites saying that the four Russians arrested in connection with the tower incident were unrelated to it.
Russian investigative authorities announced later that an arrest warrant had been issued against Mustang. On September 6, he was placed on the international wanted list at a request by the Moscow department of the Russian Interior Ministry.
