SHANGHAI, August 13 (Itar-Tass) —— Two Russian citizens, who were unlawfully held in the city of Hangzhou in the territory of a Russian bankrupt company’s works, have left for Russia, a source at the Russian Consulate General in Shanghai said.
Russian diplomats, with whose active participation the two representatives of the Advento company were freed from the captivity, accompanied them to the airport and saw them boarding the plane for Russia.
The Russian company’s director-general Vitaly Rudykh and interpreter Olga Borisevich on Monday were seized by workers and Chinese business partners, who demanded the immediate repayment of the bankrupt company’s dept of more than three million yuan (about 470,000 dlrs) to the suppliers and workers. During the five days when the Russian citizens were held in the territory of the works in the province of Zhejiang, local authorities and police, despite the repeated appeals of the Russian Consulate General in Shanghai, did nothing to free the people. They were released on Friday thanks to the decisive actions of Russian diplomats. Accompanied by a Russian diplomat, they broke out of the captivity.
“We are very much thankful and grateful to the general consulate diplomats who pulled us from there, literally, covering us with themselves,” Borisevich, one of the freed Russians, told an Itar-Tass correspondent by telephone.
“Thanks to the efforts, the acute phase of the conflict was settled,” Russian Consul General in Shanghai Andrei Smorodin said in an interview to Itar-Tass. According to him, the deciding role was played by the joining of the Russian Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Foreign Ministry, thanks to which, a local official accompanied by many policemen arrived at the site. Vice-Consul Yevgeny Gryaznov used the situation to take the Russians in a car, and they drove away from the territory.