Savage torture and 11-year sentence for opposing Russia’s occupation of Kherson

Russia’s reprisals against Kherson residents began in 2022 when the latter came out in huge numbers to tell the invading army to go home, and that Kherson was Ukraine.  It has continued ever since tje invaders were forced to withdraw on 11 November 2022. Kherson is subjected to constant bombing and many of those earlier abducted  have been sentenced by Russian or Russian occupation ‘courts’ to huge terms of imprisonment on absurd charges.  One of the victims was Serhiy Arefiev, a young father, abducted back on 23 March 2022.

Kherson fell to the Russians on 1 March 2022, however public protests continued until the invaders began opening fire on unarmed protesters, as well as abducting and torturing protesters or anyone viewed as ‘too pro-Ukrainian’

Serhiy Arefiev, who worked for a mobile communications firm, took an active part in the protests.  He and a friend were planning to do so on 23 March 2022 as well, however a car blocked their path, with Russian soldiers jumping out and seizing them.  Both had bags placed over their heads and were taken to a police station which the invaders had commandeered.

Both men were interrogated, however the friend was eventually released, while Arefiev was first held prisoner for five days in a police holding unit in Kherson, and then taken to occupied Crimea.

In virtually all cases where civilians have been abducted, the Russians refuse to provide any information about a person’s whereabouts, and often will not even confirm that they are holding him or her.  It is likely that Serhiy’s wife, Polina, first learned that he was being held in SIZO (remand prison) No. 1 in Simferopol thanks to a former civilian hostage who confirmed that he had been held, together with Arefiev, in the appalling conditions of this SIZO.  He reported that they had not received enough to eat and that the cells were so overcrowded that there was one bed for every two hostages, with the men not allowed to sit on these beds during the day.  They were not allowed any physical exercise, the former hostage said, presumably meaning the very limited amount of time that such prisoners are taken out into an enclosed courtyard or similar.  Although it was claimed that this was because of a supposed danger of the hostages trying to escape, this was probably to avoid them having more contact with other men held at the SIZO.  Russia’s abduction of Ukrainian civilians and imprisonment of them, often without any legal status, is in flagrant violation of international law.  So too it the appalling treatment they receive, as well as clear evidence that they, and Ukrainian prisoners of war, are subjected to torture.  

Polina told the Media Initiative for Human Rights that Serhiy had a haemorrhage in one eye, a bruise over half his face and had been unable to eat for a week after they beating to which he was subjected. He had also been tortured with the use of electric shocks (where electric currents are passed through wires attached to sensitive parts of the body – fingers, earlobes or genitals.

Polina had already left occupied Kherson, together with the couple’s small son, when, in May 2022 Russians tried to force their way into the couple’s Kherson apartment. They failed, after which an FSB officer got in touch with Polian, sending her an audio recording on which Serhiy asked his wife to give the Russians his working computer.  It is most unlikely that he did so voluntarily, but at least the Russians allowed him to have a telephone conversation with his wife.  Over a period of time, they appear to have told both Serhiy and Polina that he would soon be released, which proved to be a cruel lie.  

In March 2023, Polina received a call from a lawyer appointed by her husband’s captors, saying that Arefiev was charged with ‘spying’.  She managed to find another lawyer, however Russia’s FSB use spying charges in part because of the degree of secrecy they can impose.  All hearings take place behind closed doors and even an independent lawyer will be forced to sign a non-divulgence agreement. 

It was learned at the end of March that Arefiev had been moved to SIZO No. 2 in Simferopol, one of two SIZO opened after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  He was held there together with Ivan Kozlov, an IT specialist from Kherson who was seized while trying to get his wife and two small children to safety on 22 April 2022.    Kozlov was also held for some time before Russia admitted to holding him, with the same ‘spying’ charges under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code brought almost a year later. He was sentenced on 30 December 2023 to 11 years in a maximum- security prison colony.  Although the three ‘hearings’ were in occupied Crimea, the sentence was passed by three ‘judges’ who are formally from the occupation ‘Kherson regional court’ in occupied Henichesk.  Two of them – Svetlana Kuraeva and Airat Galyamov – were brought in from Russia after the full-scale invasion.  The third was Viktor Mozheliansky, a Ukrainian traitor who has been notorious for his part in political ‘trials’ in occupied Crimea since soon after Russia’s invasion in 2014.   As well as facing treason charges from Ukraine’s prosecutor, Mozheliansky is under EU sanctions.

It seems these same three individuals were responsible for passing an 11.5 year sentence against Serhiy Arefiev in November 2023, with this also in a maximum-security prison colony.  The ‘prosecutor’ in his case was Volodymyr Komiedov, another traitor, who chose to serve the aggressor state shortly after its invasion in February 2014. 

Serhiy Arefiev did appeal against the monstrous sentence, with this ‘heard’ in May 2024, resulting only in a reduction of the sentence by half a year.  He is held at a prison colony in Krasnodar.