‘30 years in hiding’

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33654, 2 October 1974, Page 13

‘30 years in hiding’

(N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) MOSCOW. A Soviet Army deserter has surrendered to the authorities after spending the last 30 years hiding in a darkened corner of a Ukrainian pig pen, according to “Komsomolskaya Pravda,” the official newspaper of the Young Communist League. It reports that Vasily Kyvyl, now a stooping, greyhaired man of 52, was detained for a few hours after his surrender, and then released under an amnesty adopted by the Government more than a quarter of a century ago. According to the newspaper, Kyvyl deserted from the German front in 1944, and made his way back to his family’s farm in the Ukrainian village of Ostrozhets, where he took refuge in a hay-loft and, later, built himself a tiny hide-out in the shack of an adjacent pig pen. His relatives brought him food and drink, and he never left his cramped hiding place, the newspaper says, adding that he told the authorities that he remained in hiding not because he feared Soviet law, but because he was afraid of being forced to join a now-defunct pro-Nazi Ukrainian group called the Banderovshchina.