Horrific sentence against Kherson woman for claimed ‘spying’ long after Russia had abducted and imprisoned her

Russia has used a fake ‘Kherson regional court’ to sentence Iryna Horobtsova to ten and a half years’ imprisonment on charges that are chillingly lawless.  It is claiming that Iryna ‘spied’ for Ukraine during a period of around ten months after the Russian invaders had abducted her and were holding her incommunicado.

Iryna had been held prisoner, and prevented from seeing her lawyer, for almost two years before Russia came up with the ‘spying’ charges.  The relevant article (276) of Russia’s criminal code has become a standard weapon against Ukrainian civilian hostages.  It is a convenient one, since the Russian FSB and prosecutor can conceal literally everything about a prosecution and ‘trial’ including, of course, the lack of any substance to the charges and ‘evidence’.   possible to conceal everything about the prosecution and ‘trial’. 

The lie in this case is frighteningly cynical and brazen.  Unless there has been a banal typo (2023 written, instead of 2022), the Russians are claiming, against irrefutable proof to the contrary that Horobtsova has only been in Russian captivity since April 2023 or later.  The Russian prosecutor general’s report claimed that it had been “established that, from February 2022 through March 2023, Iryna Horobtsova gathered and passed to an official of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence information about the places of deployment, time, routes and movement of units of the Russian Federation armed forces and Rosgvardia on the territory of Kherson oblast; the types of military technology and arms, linking this to local maps and geolocating coordinates. The information passed on could have been used to direct fire at places where the Russian armed forces were deployed.”

Russia’s use of its criminal code to ‘try’ Horobtsova is in violation of international law which prohibits it from applying its legislation on occupied territory.  The charge, even if true, would be Orwellian in its manipulation of the truth since Russia has claimed the right to ‘try’ a Ukrainian citizen for allegedly passing Ukrainian defenders information aimed at helping them defend Ukrainian territory against an invader.  This would still be the case even if the lie about the timing was deliberate, since Russia’s fake ‘referendum’ at gunpoint and subsequent claim of ‘overwhelming support for joining Russia’ is spurious, and in no way changes the fact that Russia is an illegal invader.

The pretence that Horobtsova was somehow free to ‘spy’ until after March 2023 is grotesque for another reason.  Kherson was liberated by Ukraine’s Armed Forces on 11 November 2022, with this making the claim that the Kherson IT specialist could have possibly had any information about Russian military movements to pass on nonsensical.

The 10.5-year sentence in a medium-security prison colony was supposedly passed by the ‘Kherson regional court’, though reported from the occupation Crimean ‘prosecutor’.  Iryna was believed to be imprisoned for most of the time in occupied Crimea, but her family were told nothing and lawyer Emil Kurbedinov prevented from seeing her and providing legal assistance.  Russia’s attempt to claim that Horobtsova was at liberty for over 10 months after her actual abduction has practical consequences as a sentence is normally counted from when a person was first taken into custody. 

Iryna Horobtsova is an IT specialist who was working (testing software) for a leading Ukrainian IT company when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  The IT company suggested that she work from abroad but she refused to leave Kherson and became very active as a volunteer.  From the first days of the invasion, she bought bandages, painkillers, etc. and took them to the local hospital to help the wounded.  She ignored the danger and drove medics to work in Kherson and the oblast, as well as delivering food and medicines to those in Kherson most in need.  She was open in expressing her opposition to the Russian invasion and took part in the mass protests in the centre of Kherson which ended only after the Russians began shooting at protesters and mounting a terror campaign. She wrote about the protests on social media, with her posts clearly demonstrating her pro-Ukrainian position and support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.  

The Russian invaders begin taking civilians prisoner and, most often, savagely torturing them in any part of Ukraine that falls under occupation.  While former or present Ukrainian soldiers, enforcement officers or public officials are frequent targets, essentially anybody with a pronounced pro-Ukrainian position is in danger.

Armed and masked Russians came for Iryna Horobtsova on 13 May 2022, her 37th birthday.  She is believed to have been held, at least most of the time, in two Crimean SIZO [remand prisons].  She was held without any formal status and without criminal charges having been laid, although the Russians had admitted to the family that she was in their custody.  Her parents approached Russia’s FSB [security service] several times.  On each occasion, they were told that Iryna was not in danger but that she would be held in detention until the end of what the Russians euphemistically call ‘the special military operation’ and the world condemns as Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.  In April 2023, Emil Kurbedinov reported that the FSB were not only preventing him from seeing Horobtsova, but were also refusing to provide any information about her.  They claimed that this was “to protect state secrets”. 

Worth noting that the international NGO Human Rights Watch drew attention to Russia’s forced disappearance of Horobtsova back in December 2022 and cited a woman who had contacted Iryna’s parents in November to say that she had been held prisoner with their daughter. Iryna had told her that she had been held in solitary confinement for over three months, and that she had been blindfolded by her captors and taken to occupied Crimea “where she was interrogated twice about her pro-Ukraine position. Horobtsova also told her that her interrogators had placed an AK-rifle on the table in front of her and hung a clothing iron on the wall in the interrogation room, threatening to use it on her if she did not “tell [them] everything.” It is likely that Iryna has been held in near total isolation, with Russia’s actions in preventing Kurbedinov from seeing her making it extremely improbable that the appointed ‘lawyer’ will be properly representing her interests.

Iryna’s mother, Tetiana Horobtsova, learned of the planned ‘trial’ in March 2024, with the first ‘hearing’ scheduled for 28 March.  A ‘lawyer’ was supposedly appointed, however this individual had not even bothered to contact Iryna’s parents and there seem grounds for suspecting that he or she is working for the prosecution.