Chilling twist in Russia’s abduction of young engineer from occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast
A young Ukrainian electrical engineer, Oleksiy Yefimenko (b. 1996), has been sentenced by a St Petersburg court to seven years’ imprisonment two years after he was abducted from his home in occupied Ukraine. Russia is increasingly using ‘spying’ charges against abducted Ukrainian civilians with this enabling it to impose total secrecy with respect to the fabricated ‘trials’ and unwarranted sentences. There are no grounds for assuming any substance to the charges in this case either, but the secrecy now also applies to why such a farcical ‘trial’ of a Ukrainian, abducted by the Russian invaders from Ukrainian territory was staged in St Petersburg.
Oleksiy Yefimenko’s abduction was first reported by the ZMINA Human Rights Centre on 24 January 2023. Citing its own sources, the NGO wrote that Oleksiy, who worked as an electrical engineer for the Mykhailivka power network in Zaporizhzhia oblast had been abducted by the Russians on 28 August 2022, and was believed to be imprisoned in occupied Melitopol.
Yefimenko was seized by the Russians while living in Mykhailivka (Zaporizhzhia oblast) with his grandparents, his mother having died five years earlier. He had been visiting his aunt in the same town on 28 August 2022 and disappeared while on his way home. That evening, he was able to call, but only to say that he had been seized, no more. There was nothing to indicate what, if anything, had prompted the Russians to abduct him. His family were, at least, able to bring food, etc. for him to the so-called ‘Melitopol commandant’s office’ once a week. Questions to Oleksiy’s Russian captors proved fruitless, with the latter saying only that they had no information and had not been told anything. At that stage, Oleksiy was held all the time in a cell, with no possibility of washing, and given food once a day. ZMINA’s source told them that the Russians had promised that he would be released by the New Year.
The Russians lied. It is unclear whether his family knew where he was held over the following 18 months or why, supposedly, he was being ‘tried’ on spying charges under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code at the St Petersburg municipal court. Judging by the reports of his sentence, it is likely that Russia has claimed that Yefimenko was, in fact, ‘detained’ in June 2023, some ten months after his actual abduction. The press service for all St Petersburg courts announced on 6 August 2024 that Yefimenko, described only as a citizen of Ukraine, had been sentenced to seven years in a maximum-security (literally ‘harsh regime’) prison colony. It was claimed that he had totally “admitted guilt and repented”. Agreement to not dispute the charges might explain a sentence which is lower than that stipulated in Russia’s criminal code for such alleged ‘espionage’. The lack of any possible grounds for such a ‘trial’ and ‘sentence’ in St Petersburg of a Ukrainian abducted by invading forces from Ukrainian territory and held incommunicado since August 2022 does not, for Russia, constitute grounds for an acquittal or lower sentence. Russia has been fabricating such ‘trials’ on spying charges since it first invaded Crimea, and has, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, first abducted a large number of Ukrainian civilians, and then sentenced them to 12 or 13 years on fake spying charges. In all cases involving Ukrainian political prisoners or civilian hostages, where a person has finally received access to an independent lawyer or been able to speak with their families, they have made it clear that any such ‘confession’ was obtained through savage and agonizing torture.
See also:
Russia sentences abducted Ukrainian Orthodox priest to 14 years for 'spying for Ukraine'
and very many others