12/17/2023 0 Comments Kidnapped man eating masked![]() Karyna provided the videos and screenshots of posts made on her father’s original social media accounts to CNN. “They wanted to make a puppet out of him.” They saw he was active on Facebook … They registered him on TikTok - my dad does not even know what TikTok is,” Kurayan’s daughter, Karyna, a 23-year-old journalist who left Ukraine after the war began, told CNN. “They started to use my father’s social media. Standing in front of a cache of weapons, his hands bound, he said he had been part of a plot to attack Russian soldiers and free activists, but that he’d given up, adding: “I suggest that all fighters of the Territorial Defense surrender their weapons.” “I think that further resistance is useless,” said Kurayan in the clip, which was shared across his social media accounts and aired on Russian state TV. In another, he denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and called on his countrymen to surrender. He said that Kherson was occupied and rallies were pointless, adding that the Territorial Defense there had disbanded. In one, Kurayan looked gaunt and ashen, flanked by two armed, masked men holding the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag and a red and black flag associated with the Ukrainian nationalist movement. “They started to use my father’s social media … they wanted to make a puppet out of him.” Karyna Kurayan, Igor’s daughterĪt first, Kurayan’s captors painted him as a patriot, posting old photos from his time running supplies to Ukrainian soldiers on the front line in Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine’s government since 2014. Soon after Kurayan’s kidnapping, his Facebook and Instagram pages, and a new TikTok account registered under his name, began posting messages entirely out of character for the man known to family and friends as a proud Ukrainian, a passionate activist and avid gardener. He was watering plants in his shoe store when he said Russian soldiers dragged him outside and threw him into a van. Soon after, Kherson fell to Russian troops and in early April, after weeks living under and protesting against their occupation, Kurayan was abducted. On February 25, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kurayan posted a selfie on Instagram with a rifle, announcing he had volunteered to fight in the Territorial Defense Forces, reserve units of Ukraine’s military. His feeds were full of palms, pomegranate trees, marigolds, bamboo and avocados, grown at his home and small business near the Black Sea. Before the war broke out, Igor Kurayan, a 55-year-old from the southern Ukrainian port city of Kherson, shared frequent gardening updates on social media. ![]()
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