The occupation ‘Crimean high court’ has passed a 21-year sentence against 27-year-old Mamut Belyalov on ‘treason’ charges over the same fabricated plot to kill a Russian-installed ‘minister’ for which he was sentenced to 12 years in 2024. The earlier sentence was based solely on a ‘confession’ extracted through torture and there is nothing to suggest that anything new has come to light. The second ‘trial’ and massive increase in sentence seem due purely to Russia’s increasing use of ‘treason’ charges against Ukrainians from occupied territory, with political prisoners already in captivity chillingly easy targets.
There was only one ‘treason trial’ on 9 September 2026 when the sentence was reported both by Eskender Bariev, Head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, and by the Russian newspaper Kommersant. Judging by the case details, there had been no ‘trial’ at all, with several hearings postponed before 8 September when the ‘court’ retired to deliver its sentence, with this read out on 9 September. The ‘judge’ in the case was Natalia Vladimirovna Kulinskaya who was probably promoted to the ‘Crimean high court’ after passing a 7-year sentence against Ukrainian civic journalist and human rights defender, Iryna Danilovych. She has remained an active player in Russia’s machine of political repression, passing massive sentences against Ismail Shemshedinov; Niyara Ersmambetova, who has two young children and an elderly father with disability status; 61-year-old Ihor Boiko; and others. The sentence, of 21 years in a maximum-security prison colony presumably includes the unserved part of the first 12-year sentence. Kulinskaya also imposed a 400 thousand rouble fine and ordered a further 22 months of restricted liberty at the end of the sentence.
It is exactly four years on 10 September 2026 since Mamut Belyalov was first seized in occupied Crimea, but it is not clear when his captors admitted to his imprisonment with this making a difference as to when the sentence is counted from.
It was learned in October 2025 that Belyalov had been brought back to occupied Crimea and subjected to so-called ‘interrogation’ in the form of savage beating, without a lawyer present. The fear then that new charges were being concocted proved to be justified with the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre learning in May 2026 that the young man was accused of ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code. Belyalov had, by then, been held in a prison in occupied Crimea, and only allowed one short call to his father. Any other communication had to be via letters which are read by the prison censor. Mamut was very clearly shown that the FSB were not just using methods of duress against him but bringing pressure to bear on his family. The ‘investigator’ would first summon Belyalov for interrogation, and then members of his family, with all of this again taking place without a lawyer present. The questions asked are those that, under the current Russian / Russian occupation regime, are likely to get a person arrested, namely about the political situation, about their attitude to Ukraine and to the so-called ‘special military operation’, as Russia calls its war of aggression against Ukraine. All of this was evidently aimed at terrorising the young man and pressuring him into ‘admitting’ the new charges, by making him believe that they could next come for his family.
Mamut Belyalov was just 24 when he was seized by the FSB on 10 September 2022. The FSB accused him of involvement in a plan to kill Vadym Volchenko, the Russian-installed ‘tourism minister’ in occupied Crimea, a plan which the FSB had, purportedly, ‘thwarted’. During the search of his car, the FSB claimed to have found a pistol and grenade.
According to the indictment, Belyalov had been ‘recruited’ by Ukraine’s Security Service who had noticed his “anti-Russian views’ which he expressed on social media. The indictment even named Belyalov’s alleged ‘handler’, as Ihor Bondarchuk, however this same person was claimed to have been behind other, supposedly planned attacks.
The handler was claimed to have instructed Belyalov to pass weapons, ammunition, explosives and money to somebody they called ‘Ihor Tyshchenko’ who, according to the indictment, was supposed to directly kill Vadym Volchenko. Tyshchenko had, however, purportedly arrived in occupied Crimea and immediately informed the FSB of the alleged plans.
Belyalov was charged with abetting plans to carry out a killing by a group of people in conspiracy (Article 105 § 2b, e and f of Russia’s criminal code) and with illegal circulation of weapons, ammunition and explosive devices (various parts of Article 222),
It is quite possible that the first information that Mamut’s family received about his whereabouts came from Nariman Dzhelyal, the renowned Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader, journalist and, until 24 August 2024, Moscow’s most famous Ukrainian political prisoner. In March 2023, Dzhelyal wrote about Belyalov, describing him as the latest victim of Russian law enforcement bodies’ lawlessness in Crimea. He explained that the young Crimean Tatar had been seized on 10 September 2022 in occupied Feodosia and accused of an attempt to kill the ‘minister of resorts and tourism’. He had, Dzhelyal wrote, been subjected to savage torture.
Dzhelyal explained that Mamut had been in the ninth grade in 2014 when, after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, the new occupation ‘administration’ appeared at school and told the students that they needed to get new, Russian, citizenship. Mamut refused. Feeling unable to remain in occupied Crimea, in 2017 he entered Kherson State Agrarian University and, on graduating, found work according to his profession at a Kherson farm. He had returned to Crimea for family reasons in September 2021, planning to leave within a couple of months, however, following the death of his grandfather, he remained at home, finding work on construction sites.
Mamut has said that he did indeed receive a call from an acquaintance from Kherson called Ilya, and that the latter had asked him to help find Tyshchenko somewhere to stay in Feodosia. It is not clear whether Tyshchenko was working for the FSB or had himself been tortured or threatened into setting up Belyalov, but this appears to have been what happened. Armed enforcement officers burst in on the scene and claimed to have ‘found’ a package containing a pistol and grenade.
Belyalov was subjected to horrific torture, including through electric currents, beatings, and threats of rape which they would video and post on the Internet.
They also tried to get him to provide ‘testimony’ against one or other person whom they would accuse of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir or the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They promised that, for this, he would get a suspended sentence.
He says that he ‘confessed’ because of the torture and also to protect the friend with whom he had arrived that evening in Feodosia and who had also ended up seized by the FSB. Tyshchenko was not detained, and Dzhelyal wrote at the end of March 2023 that he was probably going to appear as prosecution ‘witness’.
On 23 September 2024, before ‘prosecutor’ Oleksandr Dombrovsky, the occupation ‘Kievsky district court’ in Simferopol under ‘judge Mykhailo Bilousov found Belyalov ‘guilty’ of possessing a weapon and of a plan to kill Vadym Volchenko. With particular cynicism, Volchenko lodged a civil suit demanding one million roubles in ‘moral compensation’. As well as the 12-year sentence in a maximum-security prison colony, Belyalov was ordered to pay the million roubles, as well as a fine of 350 thousand roubles.
On 17 December 2025, the cassation court reduced Belyalov’s sentence by a mere six months (from 12 to 11.5 years). The court also reduced the fine to 300 thousand but left the so-called ‘compensation’ to Volchenko unchanged.
It is not clear when Belyalov took a Russian passport, but Russia has made it all but impossible to live on occupied territory without it. It is now using such citizenship as a weapon against Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians in occupied Crimea, whom it charges with ‘treason’.
