Russia fabricates insane charges against Ukrainian partisan first seized in Donetsk 8 years ago

Hryhory Sinchenko’s Russian captors have moved the 33-year-old Ukrainian political prisoner to a SIZO [remand prison] in Taganrog where, according to his mother, he is again being subjected to torture.  It is particularly disturbing that his lawyer, who arrived at the SIZO on 14 August, was prevented from seeing Hryhory and told that the latter had rejected his services. Any ‘rejection’ would very likely have been extracted through torture or threats, especially given that the travesty of a ‘trial’ that Russia has been staging appeared to be close to its predetermined outcome.

According to Tetiana Hulievska, her son was moved to the Taganrog SIZO No. 2 around the middle of August and has not been taken to the court hearings at the Southern District Military Court (in Rostov) since then.  The last court hearing on 26 August did take place, with Sinchenko participating by video link.  His lawyer was present at this and managed to ask Sinchenko why his face looked battered.  Hryhory replied that he was being beaten by the SIZO staff.  At that point, the connection was cut.

Hulievska says that SIZO No. 2 is controlled by the FSB and is being used to imprison Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages, with the prison staff refusing to pass on letters and parcels from relatives.  It is not clear whether this is true of prisoners of war, but Russia knows that it is in grave violation of international law through its abduction and imprisonment of civilians, and very often refuses to give any information about their whereabouts.

This was not, up till recently, the case with Sinchenko, despite the degree to which Russia is incriminating itself through its ‘trial’ of a young man taken prisoner in the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ which Russia was then falsely claiming was entirely independent of it. Now it appears, Russia has decided to charge Sinchenko with ‘international terrorism’. The charge of ‘acts of international terrorism’ was only added, as Article 361, to Russia’s criminal code, in 2016, and had not resulted in any convictions until Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  Since then, it has used the charge a number of times against Ukrainian civilians illegally abducted from occupied territory and, usually, tortured into providing ‘confessions’.  Such ‘an act of international terrorism’ is said to be an explosion, act of arson or other actions, committed outside Russia and jeopardizing the life, health, freedom or inviolability of Russian citizens “for the purpose of violating the peaceful co-existence of states and peoples, or aimed against the interests” of Russia.  Since you can be convicted merely because of a supposed “threat to commit such actions”, the FSB can easily improve their ‘crime-fighting statistics’ by claiming to have thwarted entirely fictitious plans. At least this is normally the case.  Here, however, Hryhory Sinchenko has been imprisoned in the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’] for over two years before Russia officially ‘recognized’ this fake entity and claimed that it had ‘joined the Russian Federation’.

Sinchenko is from occupied Makiivka, which is close to Donets.  He had been living in Kherson but returned to ‘DPR’ in 2016, seemingly, in order to reinstate medical records to conform his disability status. in Makiivka, Sinchenko became involved in a partisan group opposing Russia’s pseudo ‘republic’ and was captured by the so-called ‘DPR ministry of state security’, on 2 December 2016.  He was accused of blowing up cigarette kiosks, and was savagely tortured., with this including the use of electric shocks; asphyxiation and beatings, as well as being suspended for several hours by handcuffs. His mother reported then that he had been so badly beaten that he suffered a collapsed lung and almost died in the prison.  The ‘search’ of Sinchenko’s family home back in 2016 boiled down to sheer plunder of anything of value, including home appliances – another ‘tradition’ that the Russians were to pursue more openly from February 2022.

Sinchenko was released in an exchange of Donbas (Donetsk and Luhansk oblast) hostages and POWs on 27 December 2017.  Driven by what his mother calls his strong sense of justice, however, Sinchenko returned to ‘DPR’ territory. 

He was seized again in October 2019, with the DPR militants bringing him, covered in blood, to his grandmother’s home.  The ‘search’ on that occasion was purportedly for explosives, though none were found.

It is now clear, though was already then suspected, that Sinchenko was accused of involvement in the blowing up of a Donetsk radio tower, providing mobile communications to occupied territory, on 27 October 2019.  As reported, this was very obviously an act by partisans, with a video of the blast posted on YouTube, together with an ultimatum, reading: “This was done in order to draw attention to the inhuman torture in MGB basements. Ill-treatment and having ones extremities connected to electric wires have become the norm in the “people’s” republics. The people of Donbas must come out in protest against torture or the fascist republic will remain without communications.”

Nothing more was heard about Sinchenko’s imprisonment until a ‘DPR wanted notice’ appeared on 21 May 2020.  This said nothing about the young man having been imprisoned and claimed that he was wanted “for a grave crime”, offering a reward for information leading to his capture. The photo had clearly been taken while he was in custody, and he had obviously been beaten, and probably tortured with electric shocks to his face.  He was recaptured on 20 June 2020. 

In September 2020, Sinchenko ended up in a prison hospital in occupied Donetsk.  He had tried to slash his wrists in protest at torture aimed at getting him to give up his lawyer, and to extract false ‘confessions’.

The above details are either omitted altogether or seriously distorted in the Russian reports about Sinchenko and his supposed ‘trial’ over alleged “spying; sabotage; attempts on the life of law enforcement officers; deliberate damage to and destruction of property; illegal crossing of the border; escaping from detention; extortion; participation in a terrorist society and multiple cases of obtaining or preparing explosives.”   It remains to be seen how Russia plans to justify the sudden slipping in of an ‘international terrorism’ charge, but it is ominously telling that they are intent of depriving him of an independent lawyer.