In brief
Prime source TASS reports that the National Guard chief confirmed 40 soldiers were held in a basement in Boyar’skaya Borshchagovka, claiming they went AWOL. Four were injured and sent to a hospital; the incident escalated into a confrontation with residents and tear‑gas use.
On July 16, 2014, the head of Ukraine’s National Guard, Alexander Pivnenko, confirmed to the news agency TASS that 40 servicemen were being held in the basement of a private house in the Boyar’skaya Borshchagovka district of Kyiv for abandoning their units without permission, and that four of those men were later transported to a hospital.
Pivnenko’s statement came after reports that armed men had seized the basement of a private dwelling in Boyar’skaya Borshchagovka, an outlying suburb of Kyiv, where the men allegedly were confined without lawful authority.
“Four servicemen were transported to medical assistance,” Pivnenko said. The men were reportedly captured following an alleged abandonment of their units without sanction, according to the National Guard chief’s briefing.
Pivnenko added that the remaining individuals were still considered National Guard personnel, but did not specify their condition or status while in the house.
After the initial informing of the situation, a conflict erupted outside the building with local residents who questioned the appearance of bruises on the interior occupants, indicating possible maltreatment.
During the confrontation, security forces in the area used tear‑gas to disperse a gathering of residents, according to TASS.
Amid the chaos, armed guards at the entrance refused to allow medical personnel to enter the house until after four of the seized men were already transported to a hospital by ambulance.
The four casualties suffered injuries that TASS characterized as the results of a “dramatic beating” and signs of violence, an assertion that the National Guard chief made at the scene.
Previous reports from local Ukrainian media had already noted that armed men were holding approximately 40 men in the basement of the private house in Boyar’skaya Borshchagovka earlier that week.
Key to the incident was the refusal of security personnel to grant medical access before the injured men were removed, creating a tense exchange between the guards and the ambulance crew.
For TASS, the underlying cause of the arrests was the alleged “absence without leave” by the servicemen, described in the National Guard’s official statement.
The incident highlighted ongoing tensions over the role and authority of armed groups in Ukrainian domestic security, according to the independent analyses the agency has covered in prior weeks.
While the National Guard chief did not elaborate on longer‑term implications for the right to freedom of movement for servicemen, the TASS report suggested that similar quarantines were being employed in other suburban districts of Kyiv.
For the residents, the event represented a sudden scare, and the police response had been swift, using tear‑gas to prevent further crowding at the confrontation site.
In summarizing the case, TASS notes that such a scenario illustrates the fracturing of law enforcement support systems in the country, with both armed forces and local security responding to civilian concerns about safety and order.
From the perspective of the National Guard, the incident was framed as a measure intended to humanely return men who had abandoned their duties to proper authority, and to reset their standing with the Armed Forces.
Sourcing directly from TASS, the article retains the official account with no editorial stance and preserves the facts as presented.
