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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Urgent plea over Crimean political prisoner charged by Russia with ‘state treason’ for refusing to fight against Ukraine

16.10.2024   
Halya Coynash
A Ukrainian not wanting to take up arms against fellow Ukrainians is facing a potential life sentence on grotesquely cynical charges

Denys Narolsky Photo from Instagram

Denys Narolsky Photo from Instagram

The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project has initiated an urgent appeal for donations* to ensure that Denys Narolsky has a lawyer for new, monstrous charges.  Russia is planning a second ‘trial’ against the young Crimean and could sentence him to life imprisonment for supposed ‘state treason’ because of his refusal to fight against Ukraine.  With respect to Ukrainian political prisoners, these proceedings are ‘trials’ in name alone, and the involvement of an independent lawyer is unlikely to change a largely predetermined ‘verdict’ and sentence.  Lawyers do, nonetheless, play an important role in providing contact with the family and in ensuring that the travesty of justice is observed.  While in this case it is specifically Denys’ mother whom Memorial is trying to help raise the money for a lawyer, the involvement of a lawyer is important here for other potential victims of such persecution. Russia made it next to impossible from 2014 for Crimeans to live under occupation without taking Russian citizenship, with the fact that Narolsky has such citizenship now being used as a weapon against him via ‘state treason’ charges.  Since 2022, Russia has been aggressively pushing its citizenship on all territory that has fallen under its occupation. It was clear from the outset that one of the motives was to enable mobilization of Ukrainians to fight in Russia’s army, and Narolsky is unlikely to be the last Ukrainian to then be accused of ‘treason’ for refusing to take up arms against his fellow Ukrainians.

It will soon be two years since Denys Narolsky (b. 5.05.1993) was first imprisoned for refusing to fight against Ukraine.  Narolsky, who has a small child, is from Ivanivka, in Crimea and worked as a car mechanic.  According to Memorial, he did his military service before Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea, but did later, in October 2014 (aged only 21), sign a contract to serve in the Russian armed forces.  He left, however, in July 2015, having understood that he could get sent to Donbas.  Although Russia was continuing to claim that the military conflict in Donbas was a ‘Ukrainian civil war’, its military, as well as state-paid and trained mercenaries, were deployed from the outset, with the first military deaths reported in August 2014. 

On 21 September 2022, seven months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced so-called partial mobilization, with this illegally including occupied Crimea.

Narolsky was ‘mobilized’ on 22 September 2022 and appointed ‘commander’of a motorized rifle squad.  He left the military unit in occupied Sevastopol five days later, on 27 September, and, with help from his mother, moved from one place to another for several months, before being arrested on 25 January 2023.  Criminal charges against the young man were first initiated on 16 December 2022 under Article 337 § 3.1 of Russia’s criminal code (going absent without leave during a period of mobilization).  This was, however, later changed to the more serious Article 318 § 3 (desertion during a period of mobilization).

The young Ukrainian did not deny having gone absent without leave. He stated that he had not wanted to serve in the military and take part in the ‘special military operation’ [Russia’s euphemism for its war against Ukraine] “since its aims are not clear to me”.  He added that he had sought legal ways to resolve the dilemma but found none. and had therefore simply left the military unit.  

The first ‘trial’ was held at the occupation ‘Crimean garrison military court’ under presiding ‘judge’ Pavel Nikolaevich Kotov, with Narolsky sentence on 30 March 2023 to nine years in a maximum-security prison colony.  That sentence was upheld on 9 June 2023 by the Southern District Military Court under presiding ‘judge’ Nikolai Sergeevich Gulko.

It was later that it became clear that Russia was also planning ‘state treason’ charges under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, with this based on correspondence with various Ukrainian departments, as well as with Ukraine’s Security Service, that the Russian FSB found on his telephone following his arrest.  Narolsky explained that he had wanted to get to mainland Ukraine to somebody living in Dnipro, with whom he had earlier done military service and had investigated ways of getting there via Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.  

In that correspondence, then later during interrogation, and in ‘court’, Narolsky expressed his categorical opposition to taking part in military action against Ukraine.

He wrote, for example, “The situation is as follows.  I am not prepared, under any circumstances or conditions, to fight against Ukraine. I did not leave Crimea when there was a chance and I now regret this.  Yes, I have a Russian passport, and I was mobilized, but I fled from the military unit to which I was sent.”

During the first interrogation on 26 January 2023, he stated that he had resigned from the Russian army back in 2015 because he had relatives in both Vinnytsia and Sumy oblasts, and friends in Ukraine who might be fighting as part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and he had not wanted to take part in that conflict.

Russia is an occupying state and, as such, has no right to impose its legislation, its conscription and mobilization on Crimea or any other occupied Ukrainian territory. Article 51 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War is entirely unequivocal. “The Occupying Power may not compel protected persons to serve in its armed or auxiliary forces. No pressure or propaganda which aims at securing voluntary enlistment is permitted”. 

Neither Russia’s claim that the occupied territory ‘joined the Russian Federation’ through fake referendums at gunpoint, nor its use of coercion to impose its citizenship change this situation in any way. On occupied territory, Russia is depriving Ukrainians of medical care, employment, their property rights and threatening to take their children from them if they do not take a Russian passport, Under such circumstances, there can be no question that they took such citizenship voluntarily, and any attempt to claim justification for conscription, mobilization or ‘state treason’ charges is cynical and illegitimate.

Memorial declared Narolsky a political prisoner back in January 2024.  Information on making donations towards the (modest) cost of a lawyer can be found here.   

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