GREEK communists have raised an urgent question in the European Parliament regarding the safety and whereabouts of two leading Ukrainian communist youth leaders arrested earlier this week on accusations of spying for Russia and Belarus.

MEP Kostas Papadakis wrote to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warning that the lives of Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine (LKSMU) leader, Mikhail Kononovich, and his brother, Aleksander Kononovich, are in danger.

He accused the EU of implementing an “unacceptable anti-communist legal framework that unhistorically and provocatively equates fascism with communism” while neonazi forces operate unchallenged and are even incorporated into the Ukrainian military and security apparatus.

The KKE has been unequivocal in its condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine but has raised the alarm over the intensified persecution of socialists and communists in Ukraine since it began.

Mr Papadakis urged Mr Borrell to “respond to the urgent demand for the immediate release of the two arrested young communists as well as the lifting of all anti-communist persecution and bans in the country.”

The brothers were detained by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) in Kiev on Sunday.

The LKSMU had recently organised a campaign calling for the severing of ties with Nato and a peaceful resolution of the conflict with Russia.

The pair, who are also active in the Anti-Fascist Committee of Ukraine, had previously been attacked in Kiev by neonazis from C14 and the National Corps.

The World Federation of Democratic Youth issued an urgent statement following their arrest, saying: “They will possibly be murdered in the following hours.”

The SBU arrested the pair on charges of “pro-Russian views and pro-Belarusian views.”

The SBU has been charged with horrific cases of torture and sexual assault against pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region between 2014 and 2017.

A report by the UN High Commissioner found that “rape, threats of rape, beatings and electrocution of genitals were often used as an interrogation technique” by Ukraine’s security forces.

The SBU is accused of ties to the fascist Azov Battalion.

It is also involved in the Ukrainian state-led rehabilitation of Nazi collaborationist organisations, including the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists which was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.

On Sunday, SBU forces shot dead Ukrainian peace negotiator Denis Kireev who was subsequently accused of being a Russian spy.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said that he was killed during an operation “to defend the nation.”

Alexei Ivanovich and Chibineev Valery Viktorovich, employees of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, were also killed during the “execution of special tasks,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said.

The 2014 Maidan coup saw the ousting of the democratically-government in Ukraine and its replacement by a pro-western regime which was initially packed with far-right ministers.

It outlawed all communist symbols in 2015 and banned the Communist Party of Ukraine. 

Statues commemorating the Red Army, which defeated the Nazis in Ukraine, were torn down across the country in the aftermath of the coup.

They were replaced with monuments, street names and plaques celebrating Nazi collaborators and Holocaust perpetrators.