Russia’s Investigative Committee tortures Ukrainians for fabricated ‘trials’, and now demands the death penalty

Aleksandr Bastrykin, Head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, has publicly called for the reinstatement of the death penalty and suggested that Russian leader Vladimir Putin could reinstate it “via a decree”.  Bastrykin is one of Putin’s closest allies and it seems unlikely that he would make such a suggestion without support from the Kremlin.   Russia is currently occupying approximately 20% of Ukrainian territory and is claiming that Crimea; as well as Donetsk; Luhansk; Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts have “become part of the Russian Federation’ (with no mention of the fact that parts of those oblasts are not under its control).  This means that Ukrainians would also be in danger of execution, very often on the basis of ‘confessions’ extracted through torture and fabricated charges.

Unlike Ukraine whose Constitutional Court in December 1999 declared the death penalty to be unconstitutional, Russia only has a moratorium in place.  This was effectively introduced in1996 when Russia joined the Council of Europe, with one of the reasons why the Constitutional Court formally declared the moratorium in 2009 being Russia’s commitment to honour the Sixth Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights prohibiting the death penalty.  Russia was thrown out of the Council of Europe following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  It immediately withdrew from the Convention, and there has been talk ever since that the death penalty could be reinstated.  Both politicians and the state-controlled media began shouting that such a reinstatement was needed after the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in March 2024  A month after the attack, a pollster called Russian Field reported that 53% of Russians had expressed support for the return of the death penalty, with 39% saying they were against.  When asked what crimes deserved the death penalty, people named paedophilia (57%); murder (56%) and ‘terrorism’ (46%).  The results of public opinion polls, especially after horrific crimes and / or acts of terrorism, are likely to show calls for the death penalty in any country, however in democratic states there is a chance of hearing opposing arguments.  The current regime has destroyed the independent media in Russia and occupied Crimea, and such results are easily manipulated. 

There is, however, one obstacle, namely the President of Russia’s Constitutional Court who on 26 June published an article in which he said that the moratorium could not change “within the framework of the current Constitution.”   Zorkin is, however, 81 and serving his seventh terms as president of a court which has overseen changes aimed solely at allowing Putin to be ‘president’ for four terms, as well as those rubberstamping Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory.

Bastrykin was clearly responding to Zorkin’s categorical statement when he proposed to reinstate the death penalty, claiming that this could be achieved ‘by presidential decree’. 

It seems unlikely, from a legal point of view, that this is really the case.  What is, however, clear is that where the Kremlin decides to follow a particular course, all bodies, including the Constitutional Court generally step into line.  Bastrykin is a very high-ranking Russian official and a crony of Putin’s from university days. Speaking at a so-called ‘international youth law forum in St. Petersburg on 28 June, he mentioned the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall, and noted that in Soviet times you could get the death penalty for killing two or three people.  In mentioning that they now get, at most, life imprisonment, he went on to mention the cost of this. His description of the conditions bear no resemblance to the brutal and inhuman reality of Russian penal institutions, however the most hypocritical note was surely in suggesting that the death penalty would be “a humane” solution (“when a person has killed 70-80-100 people”).

Advocates of the death penalty invariably cite heinous and bloody crimes, however the reality in the case of the Russian Federation and occupied Ukrainian territory would be very different.   Bastrykin and his ‘Investigative Committee’ have been using torture and the total degradation of the Russian court system to concoct fictitious ‘war crimes’ or other serious charges against abducted Ukrainian citizens since 2014. In one case, the Investigative Committee claimed that Serhiy Lytvynov from Luhansk oblast was a Ukrainian ‘war criminal’, and showed a video in which Lytvynov ‘confessed’ to supposed crimes that might well, according to Bastrykin’s logic, warrant the death penalty.  This was perhaps the only occasion when the Investigative Committee was forced to drop such insane charges, after it was proven by Lytvynov’s lawyer and human rights groups that neither the alleged ‘murder victims’ nor the streets where they were supposed to have lived had ever existed.  This did not stop a Russian ‘court’ from swallowing equally absurd, but lesser, charges and sentencing Lytvynov to 8.5 years’ imprisonment.   

Bastrykin himself was personally involved in the case of Ukrainians Mykola Karpiuk and Stanislav Klykh.  They were held incommunicado and savagely tortured into providing insane ‘confessions’ implicating, among others, a former Ukrainian Prime Minister (Arsen Yatseniuk) in supposed ‘war crimes’ in Chechnya. 

Russia is now very clearly using the same methods for its multiple ‘trials’ and, often, life sentences against Ukrainian prisoners of war.  

While the horrific nature of the Crocus City Hall attack is not in question, it can only be hoped that the evidently tortured men shown on Russian television really were involved.  Given Russia’s attempt to blame Ukraine for an attack that an ‘Islamic State faction’ admitted to, this is not at all guaranteed.

Bastrykin’s reference to multiple killers as those deserving of the death penalty is hypocritical for another reason.  Russia has, since the second half of 2022, been releasing convicted criminals, including those who killed several people, if they agree to fight in Ukraine.  Very many have returned to Russia, ‘pardoned’ and free, only to kill again.  Nor is this a particular problem, since those who reoffend, or others suspected of a crime, or those convicted already, can get charges dropped or the sentence suspended if they sign a contract to fight in Russia’s army. 

In theory, only those facing or convicted of minor or medium severity crimes are considered.  This, however, was the theory from the outset, but it did not stop Russia releasing those convicted of multiple killings or other violent crimes. 

The only consistency appears to be that those convicted on ‘terrorism’ charges are not eligible. Russia is, however, abusing its fatally flawed ‘terrorism legislation’ as a weapon, especially against the Crimean Tatar human rights movement, in occupied Crimea and against Ukrainians abducted from other occupied Ukrainian territory.  These recognized political prisoners are the people who are being sentenced to 20 years or more in Russian prisons.  Even Bastrykin is not proposing sentencing men to death who are accused of ‘terrorism’ purely on the basis of a flawed Supreme Court ruling and unproven involvement in an organization (Hizb ut-Tahrir) which is legal in Ukraine.   There is less scope for optimism about the kind of ‘trials’ Russia is now concocting against Ukrainian prisoners of war who are, effectively, accused of Russia’s crimes in Mariupol or other Ukrainian cities.  The same is true of the many ‘terrorism’ or ‘international terrorism’ charges that Russia is using against civilians abducted from their homes in occupied parts of Ukraine.  Even the fundamental principle that the law is not retroactive was flouted in occupied Crimea for Russia’s persecution of Crimean Tatar leader Akhtem Chiygoz and other Crimean Tatars.  Even if this principle was upheld with respect to the death penalty, it would not protect Ukrainians seized after the decision on reinstatement.

Russia is claiming that Ukrainian territory is now ‘Russian’ and is also making it impossible for Ukrainians to live there without accepting Russian citizenship.  This means that any reinstatement of the death penalty could be applied against Ukrainians.