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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Nariman Dzhelyal, tortured Donbas hostages and Berdiansk priests freed, others remain in Russian captivity and in danger

01.07.2024   
Halya Coynash
The release of the Crimean Tatar leader, Donbas hostages and imprisoned priests show that publicity and pressure can help, and underscores how much torment other hostages are enduring

Free! (Nariman Dzhelyal on the far right) Photo Dmytro Lubinets

Free! (Nariman Dzhelyal on the far right) Photo Dmytro Lubinets

Ukraine’s Constitution Day was a truly joyous occasion this year, with the release from Russian captivity of Crimean Tatar Mejlis leader Nariman Dzhelyal and nine other Ukrainian civilian hostages.  Those freed included Valery Matiushenko and Olena Piekh, both of whom urgently need medical care, not least as a result of the savage torture they endured since their seizure in 2017 and 2018, respectively.   The joy is tinged with sadness, as so many Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian hostages remain imprisoned, including many whose lives are in very real danger.  Nariman has already spoken of his willingness to help seek the release of other hostages, although this will surely have to wait.  He and all of the hostages, including two Greek Catholic priests, Father Bohdan Heleta and Father Ivan Levytsky, have clearly been held in appalling conditions and will require lengthy periods of rehabilitation.

News of the ten civilian hostages’ release came late on 28 June from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.  Russia is a bandit state and we can only speculate what effective ransom was demanded for the release, in particular, of Nariman Dzhelyal.  Among those greeting the freed hostages were Tetiana Matiushenko who has fought tirelessly for the release of her husband and other hostages seized in occupied Donbas long before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  Among the many rejoicing at the return to Ukraine of Nariman Dzhelyal were veteran Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev and Refat Chubarov, Chair of the Mejlis, or representative assembly, of the Crimean Tatar people. 

Less is known of the four woman hostages and one man, abducted since Russia’s full-scale invasion: Kateryna Briukhanova; Liudmyla Honcharenko; Pavlo Kuprienko; Mykola Shved and Natalia Zakharenko.

Even before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the aggressor state was holding at least 120 Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners, including Nariman Dzhelyal and the two cousins, Asan and Aziz Akhtemov, with whom he was ‘tried’. There were also at least 44 Ukrainian prisoners of war and 300 civilian hostages held prisoner in Russia’s proxy ‘Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics’ [D-LPR’].  Very many of those hostages, including Valery Matiushenko and Olena Piekh, had been seized and subjected to months of torture for their pro-Ukrainian position.  Since February 2024, the number of civilian hostages has risen dramatically, with even the whereabouts of many of them unknown.  In other cases, preposterous charges of ‘spying’; ‘terrorism’ or even ‘international terrorism’ have been concocted, with abducted men and women ‘sentenced’ to huge terms of imprisonment, mostly in Russia, though sometimes in occupied parts of Ukraine.

Nariman Dzhelyal; Asan Akhtemov and Aziz Akhtemov

The three Crimean Tatars and two others were effectively abducted from 3-4 September 2021.  It was clear from the outset that this was revenge against Dzhelyal for his participation in the vital Crimea Platform initiative in Kyiv just two weeks earlier. Both civic journalist Asan Akhtemov (b. 1989) and his cousin, Aziz Akhtemov (b. 1996) were seized during the night from 3-4 September, held incommunicado and prevented from seeing independent lawyers until the European Court of Human Rights [ECHR] intervened almost ten days later. The two men immediately retracted their ‘confessions’ and gave shocking accounts of the torture used to obtain this.  As well as electric shocks and other physical torture, the FSB had also threatened reprisals against the men’s families.  The FSB first escalated the charges against all three men after Asan and Aziz refused to remain silent about the torture, and all three received horrific sentences, despite the lack of any evidence or even proof of the supposed ‘act of sabotage’ (claimed to have occurred while Dzhelyal was in Kyiv). 

At present, the 15-year sentence in a harsh-regime prison colony against Asan Akhtemov and 13-year sentence against Aziz Akhtemov remain in force.  It is imperative that pressure continues on Russia to release them also (more details and addresses for letters here).

Religious terror

Father Bohdan Heleta and Father Ivan Levytsky were seized by the Russian occupiers of Berdiansk (Zaporizhzhia oblast) on 16 November 2022, with nothing at all known of their whereabouts for over eight months.  There were also worrying reports that Russia had tortured the two priest monks from the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church to  try to extract insane ‘confessions to terrorism’. 

There were very real grounds for concern, and not only because Father Bohdan suffers from diabetes.  In February 2024, 59-year-old Stepan Podolchak, a priest of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine and head of a church in occupied Kalanchak (Kherson oblast) died two days after the Russians abducted him from his home and took him away, barefooted, and with a bag over his head. It is, unfortunately, likely that he was tortured to death because he had refused to transfer his newly built church and its congregation, into the Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarch.  Father Stepan had refused, insisting that he would not betray his oath nor his congregation.

The sentence on grotesque ‘spying’ charges is also expected at the beginning of August 2024 against Father Kostiantyn (Maksymov) from occupied Tokmak.  He was abducted in May 2023, also after opposing attempts to forcibly merge the Berdiansk Diocese into the Russian Orthodox Church.

Donbas hostages

59-year-old Valery Matiushenko was seized by militants from the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ in July 2017 and tortured for many months at the notorious Izolyatsya secret prison in occupied Donetsk. He was later ‘sentenced’ by a kangaroo ‘court’ to ten years’ imprisonment.

52-year-old Olena Piekh was seized in occupied Horlivka (near Donetsk) in August 2018.  The torture she was subjected to, including electric shocks, screws twisted into her knees, asphyxiation and mock execution, have caused serious deterioration in her health.  Representatives of the aggressor state which claimed to be invading Ukraine and killing its population to achieve ‘denazification’ also subjected Olena to foul anti-Semitic abuse.

Pressure and publicity can work!

Ten Ukrainian civilians are free and safely back in Ukraine despite Russia’s violation of all norms of international law, including through its abductions and incarceration of civilians.  Their release underscores the role we can all play in  ensuring that hostages are not forgotten and that Ukraine’s partners help to put pressure on Russia. 

The following are just some of the hostages who have been held prisoner for six years or more.

Yury Shapovalov (b. 1964) is a neuropathologist from Donetsk who was abducted in January 2018 and tortured at ‘Izolyatsya’  After claiming for eight years that such persecution in Donbas was nothing to do with them, Russia is now ‘retrying’ Ukrainians ‘sentenced’ by kangaroo courts in occupied Donbas, and may have illegally moved Shapovalov to Russia (details here).

The same is seen with the abduction, torture and, now, ‘trial’ in Russia of 52-year-old Serhiy Kuris seized in occupied Donetsk on 6 September 2019;  A Russian ‘court’ also recently sentenced Oleksandr Pokorielov to life imprisonment for the killing of Russian mercenary ‘Motorola’ (Arsen Pavlov) and attempted killing of another militant. The aggressor state which is likely to have commissioned the killing of both individuals involved put Pohorielov and three other Ukrainian hostages (Artem Yena, Vasyl Churylov and Oleksandr Tymoshenko ‘on trial’ years after they were seized by a proxy ‘republic’ Russia was pretending not to control.  Hryhory Sinchenko is facing an equally shocking ‘sentence’. 

See also information about Olena Fedoruk, who was abducted around the same time as Valery Matiushenko and other civilians here

Silence abets Russia in torturing and risking the lives of Ukrainian hostages and POWs in occupied Donbas

There are also a number of political prisoners whose lives are in immediate danger in Russian captivity.

See:

Russia admits to passing death sentence against imprisoned Crimean Tatar civic journalist Amet Suleimanov

SOS! Foreign diplomats in Russia can help Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners!

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