19-year-old from occupied Donbas sentenced to 12 years for donation for Ukrainian defenders
There was warranted international outrage on 15 August over Russia’s 12-year sentence against US and Russian national Ksenia Karelin for a $51 donation to a Ukrainian charity. Much less, unfortunately, is heard about the ever-mounting number of Ukrainian citizens on occupied territory whom Russia is imprisoning for supporting Ukraine and its defenders. Usually, although not always, where Russia has forced Ukrainians to take Russian passports, it uses the same ‘treason’ charges as those against Karelina. Other favourites are conveniently secret ‘spying’ charges and the totally grotesque claim that Ukrainians who donated money to Ukraine’s Armed Forces were ‘financing terrorism’.
On 17 July 2024, a Russian court sentenced 19-year-old Danylo Yefimov from occupied Snizhne (Donetsk oblast) to 12 years in a maximum-security prison colony, with everything about the story chilling. Danylo had made several money transfers (around $144 in total) to the Serhiy Prytula Foundation, with this discovered when the young man tried to go on holiday with his family to Turkey. He was stopped by Russian border guards specifically because he did not have a Russian passport. They proceeded to go through his telephone and discovered evidence of the money transfers to this Foundation which supports both Ukraine’s defenders and civilians suffering as the result of Russia’s aggression.
Russia twice imposed periods of administrative detention. It was during the second 30-day term of imprisonment that Danylo refused to sign the documents thrust in front of him, ‘admitting guilt’. He was arrested on 15 January 2024 and accused of ‘state treason’ for the money transfers although this is nonsense since he is not a Russian citizen. He was taken to the SIZO [remand prison] in Rostov [Russia] where, through torture or threats of even worse reprisals, he agreed to provide a so-called ‘confession’.
On 8 August 2024, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that a supposed ‘military court’ in occupied Luhansk had sentenced a Ukrainian to eight and a half years in a maximum-security prison colony. He had, it was alleged, made at least eight money transfers to support the Azov Regiment, with Russia claiming this to be ‘financing terrorism’ under Article 205.5 § 1 of its criminal code. The report falsely claimed that the Azov Regiment, which is part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, is a “Ukrainian militarized national organization”. The supposed justification for ‘terrorism’ charges came from a Russian supreme court ruling on 2 August 2022, just over five months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This labelled the Azov Regiment a ‘terrorist organization’ and banned it on “the territory of the Russian Federation”. The ruling has, as feared from the outset, been used as pretext for illegal ‘trials’ of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages. Any application of Russian legislation on illegally occupied \\Ukrainian territory is in violation of the Geneva Convention. It does, however, take a particularly brazen form of cynicism to claim that a regiment within Ukraine’s Armed Forces and the defenders in it are ‘terrorist’, yet Russia has used this ruling as pretext for sentencing men seized while they were defending Mariupol to 25 years or even life imprisonment.
Russia has brought abductions and enforced disappearances to any Ukrainian territory which fell under its control, with former Ukrainian defenders and essentially anybody with a pro-Ukrainian position likely to be targeted. It is now using the supreme court ruling as pretext for a related form of repression, with armed and masked Rosgvardia fighters very ostentatiously ‘arresting’ Ukrainians for donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
It is now using this same pretext on occupied territory for ostentatious ‘arrests’ by armed and masked Rosgvardia fighters and long sentences purportedly handed down by illegitimate occupation ‘courts’.
News of Donbas reported on 5 August that it knew of at least four cases over recent months that people had been accused of ‘financing terrorism’. The ZMINA Human Rights Group is aware of over 250 cases where people on occupied territory have been detained supposedly because of their support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces, etc.
On 30 July, for example, the Russian proxy ‘Luhansk people’s republic investigative committee’ posted a video of a person from this fake ‘republic’ being arrested for donations to Azov. He was supposed to have made several money transfers in October 2023 and was evidently tortured or terrorized into expressing his supposed “repentance”.
On 29 July, Rosgvardia reported the arrest of 25 people in (occupied parts of) Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts. They were claimed to have gathered and passed to Ukraine’s Armed Forces information about the actions of Russia’s military and enforcement bodies, to have “made public calls to terrorist activities”, with those seized alleged to be “participants and sponsors of banned organizations.” News of Donbas notes that, at very least, the claim about ‘public calls’ being a dead give-away, “after all nobody under [Russian] occupation would risk openly demonstrating their opposition to Russian policy.”
These arrests and ‘trials’ are aimed at terrorizing the population of occupied territory, with a standard element being ‘confessions’ almost certainly extracted through torture.
See also:
Moscow revives Stalin’s SMERSH to hunt down resistance in occupied Ukraine
5-year sentence in Russian-occupied Berdiansk for social media posts about defenders of Ukraine