Abducted, tortured and sentenced by Russian invaders for joining a Ukrainian organization in Ukraine

Almost a year after abducting Pavlo Zozuliuk from his home in occupied Kakhovka, the Russian invaders have used a fake ‘court’ to formally imprison him on surreal charges.  The aggressor state found a Ukrainian ‘guilty’ of having belonged to the Ukrainian nationalist organization Right Sector in Ukraine where the organization is entirely legal.  In comparison with some of the charges fabricated against Ukrainian civilian hostages and ‘sentences’ passed, the two years in this case is small.  The cynicism is, nonetheless, staggering.

43-year-old Pavlo Zozuliak earned a living in his native Kakhovka as a Paintball instructor and was well-known in the city for confronting local politicians and standing up for justice and those in need.  His sister, Natalia Lukashenko, believes that his active position probably made enemies among those who have since been willing to collaborate with the invader.

Kakhovka was seized by the Russians at the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Zozuliuk was first abducted in October 2022.  On that occasion, however, he was held for 12 days and then released.

The Russians came back again on 27 (or 26) July 2023, with nine armed fighters arriving at the home of Pavlo’s very ill father whom he was helping and taking Pavlo away. His friends told the Centre for Journalist Investigations that he was later brought back to the house, for a search, “all blue from bruises and broken bones”.  The torture had been used to extract “some kind of confessions”, with his family told only that the Russians were planning to ‘try’ him under three articles of Russia’s criminal code and sentence him to anything from 12 years to life imprisonment.

Natalia Lukashenko later told the Media Initiative for Human Rights that, during their ‘search’, the Russians ‘found’ some Right Sector leaflets and a shock pistol.  The family believe that the Russians planted both items, and point out that, had they really been there, they would have been found during the first abduction and search.

The Russians then used their seizure of Pavlo Zozuliuk for propaganda purposes, although they staged the imitation seizure a month later, on 27 August 2023 in a different part of Kakhovka.   The video, shown on Russian propaganda media and on social networks, claimed to show the seizure of an ‘extremist’ from Right Sector.  This was something of a throwback to the first years of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine when Russia made a bogeyman out of the nationalist movement and used unproven allegations of involvement in it for several high-profile political show trials of Ukrainian political prisoners.  The organization was outlawed as ‘extremist’ in Russia in November 2014. 

Even were there any grounds for the ban, it would have nothing to do with any alleged involvement by Zozuliuk in Right Sector in Kherson oblast many years before Russia’s invasion and seizure of Kakhovka and Nova Kakhovka.  

On the video which Zozuliuk was almost certainly tortured into speaking on, Zozuliuk says that he joined Right Sector in 2014 in Nova Kakhovka and provided transportation and taught basic shooting skills.  The Russians have, Pavlo’s nephew, Stanislav said, taken a trainer of paintball for young people and tried to claim he was training ‘Right Sector extremists’ for some kind of storming of the Russian Federation.  Natalia insists that her brother was not involved in any political party or organization.

Zozuliuk’s ‘trial’ took place at the occupation ‘Nova Kakhovka district court’ with Zozuliuk ‘sentenced’ by this illegitimate body to two years’ imprisonment in a medium-security prison colony. 

The charge was of having been a member of Right Sector from 2014 to 2016, with the invaders using Article 282 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code, which punishes for involvement recognized as ‘extremist’ in the Russian Federation. The occupation ‘investigative committee’ embellished this somewhat with the claim that Zozuliuk had made public calls via the Internet to join Right Sector.  He was also alleged to have carried out “training of participants in the banned movement to prepare them for taking part in real military action against the interests of the Russian Federation.”   There can be no proof of the latter as it simply could not have taken place.  Most importantly, Russia has simply passed over the fact that it neither has, nor ever had, jurisdiction to charge a Ukrainian citizen, under Russian legislation, with involvement, on Ukrainian territory, in an organization that is legal in Ukraine.  If the claim that Zozuliuk tried to ‘recruit’ two residents of Tavriisk in October 2022 into Right Sector was supposed to acknowledge and resolve this fundamental flaw in such a prosecution, it did not.   There was no organization in October 2022 for such ‘recruitment’ and Pavlo Zozuliuk had spent almost half of that month being tortured in Russian captivity.