Three men abducted from Kherson oblast, tortured and ‘sentenced’ twice for Russian propaganda

Russia has abducted, tortured and staged fake ‘trials’ against a huge number of Ukrainians from parts of Ukraine seized after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  What is particularly sinister in this case is the fact that the propaganda sources report the sentences against Oleksandr Sunahatulin; Vladyslav Kryvy and Oleksandr Protsiuk as though they have just been passed.  Sentences against two of the men, probably three, were reported by the same type of media from November 2023 to January 2024.  It is to be hoped that Russia confined itself to boasting of the illegal sentences twice, without repeating the torture.

Any further information appears to have come from the Russian propaganda resource Tavriya which, on 28 July 2024, reported that “three residents of Kherson oblast have been convicted of spying”.  The implication was that the convictions had just taken place, however it seems likely that all three were sentenced by Russian courts considerably earlier. 

Sunahatulin is now 26, and is probably the same person as the 24-year-old Oleksandr Tsunahatulin, whose conviction the Russian publication Kommersant reported on 7 December 2023.  Calling him a ‘spy’, Kommersant said that the 11-year sentence had been passed by the Rostov regional court, and that he had been charged under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code, i.e. ‘spying’.  The publication noted that there had been only one ‘hearing’ which might mean that the young man had agreed to not deny the charges.  The court press service had not provided details, citing the ‘case’s secrecy’, however Russian pro-regime social media channels are clearly now reporting that he was accused of passing on Russian military coordinates.   

The Tavriya report makes no mention of the fact that Oleksandr Protsiuk, from Kherson oblast, appears to have been sentenced on 12 January 2024.  This was on identical charges with three ‘judges’ from the same Rostov regional court sentencing the Ukrainian to 11 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.

30=year-old Vladyslav Kryvy was a lecturer at Kherson State Agrarian Economic University when seized by the Russians in April 2022.  He was sentenced in November 2023 to 12 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.  The charge was also of ‘spying’ (Article 276), however all details about the ‘case’ were concealed.

Kryvy was initially held in one of the prison-torture chambers that the Russian invaders set up in Kherson oblast, before being taken to Moscow and held for a while in the Lefortovo SIZO [remand prison]. He was later sent to occupied Crimea Simferopol. His family almost certainly knew nothing about his whereabouts until the reports in the Russian state media on 8 May 2022. He was shown in a so-called ‘interview’ to Ivan Litomin on the Kremlin-loyal Izvestia and REN-TV.  We know from all those forced into making videoed ‘confessions’, or ‘interviews’, that they do so after torture and with the threat of this being repeated unless they say what is demanded of them.  In several cases, the person was forced into making several such videos, and it was noticeable in the case of Kryvy that the video is not continuous, with scenes clearly pasted together. 

The story told was that Kryvyy (in the Russian, Krivoy) became an agent of Ukraine’s SBU [Security Service] back in 2014.  Supposedly, until 2022, he was not particularly active, used only when the SBU needed official witnesses (for searches, etc).  In March 2022, he was purportedly contacted by the SBU contact who demanded that he collect information about Russian military technology, described by the Kremlin-loyal media as “on territory under the control of the Russian Federation”.)

The ’confession’ bore all the hallmarks of the FSB genre including implausible details aimed at avoiding any suggestion that a person might have acted against the Russian invaders out of motives of patriotism.  Here, Kryvy was forced to claim that he had been threatened with forced mobilization into the Ukrainian Armed Forces if he did not fulfil the tasks, although Kherson was, at that point under Russian occupation.

It is disturbingly unclear why these three sentences have been reported now, as though they had just been passed.  Since ‘spying trials’ are a favourite for Russia’s FSB as the secrecy around them mean that the charges can be pulled out of thin air, with little or no pretence at providing ‘evidence’.  This time, however, the reports claim in each case that the men passed on enemy coordinates, so perhaps the information is aimed at sending a chilling message to others on occupied territory of what they face if they help their own Armed Forces defend Ukrainian territory.