Horrific sentences where any Ukrainian will do in Russian-occupied Crimea
The Russian occupation ‘Crimean high court’ has sentenced Vladyslav Kisliakov to 13 years’ maximum-security imprisonment for supposedly passing on information to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence about Russian air defence systems in occupied Kerch. Kisliakov (b. 2001) was charged under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code with ‘treason’. As always, Russia is using the Russian citizenship it forces Ukrainians to take to then claim that (alleged) actions in support of Ukraine constitute ‘state treason’.
Kisliakov is claimed to have gathered information about the local of Russian air defence systems in Kerch in September 2023 and passed these on to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence [HUR]. Russia’s prosecutor general noted that the information had been correct and could have been used by Ukraine to inflict attacks.
The sentence reported on 18 October has yet to come into force. It is not clear whether Kisliakov had a proper lawyer, and will lodge an appeal. As is so often the case, virtually nothing is known about the ‘trial’, with the first and only information provided together with the news of the sentence. The ‘Crimean high court’, many of whose ‘judges’ are under international sanctions, passed the 13-year sentence and a further 18-month term of restricted liberty
Two days earlier, on 16 October, Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court in Rostov sentenced a Ukrainian from occupied Sevastopol to 21 years. The charges there were ‘state treason’, as well as ‘planning an act of terrorism’.
These so-called ‘trials’ are terrifyingly anonymous, with no possibility of assessing the ‘evidence’ and ascertaining how it was obtained. The latter is of critical importance since such cases are frequently based solely on supposed ‘confessions’ extracted while a person was held incommunicado, without a proper lawyer.
We know only that the unnamed man from Sevastopol was charged with Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code (state treason); Article 205.3 (undergoing training in order to carry out terrorist activities); and planning a terrorist attack under Article 205 § 1 (and 30 § 1). He was sentenced to 21 years’ ‘special’ [harshest) regime imprisonment, with the first four years in a prison (the worst type of penal institution).
Russia has used the charge of undergoing training to carry out so-called terrorist activities in many of its illegal ‘trials’ of Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages. Here, it was claimed that the unnamed person had been recruited by Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] in 2022. He was accused both of having passed on details about the location of Russian military sites in Sevastopol, and of having planned ‘a terrorist attack, this allegedly supposed to be an arson attack on a Russian-controlled administrative building in Sevastopol.
The person had allegedly “found the necessary instruments, undergone the relevant training, but did not manage to finish what he had begun since he was detained by FSB officers.”
Russia has been using such claims about purportedly thwarted plans to commit acts of sabotage since soon after its invasion and annexation of Crimea. In all cases where the defendants have had access to independent lawyers, there has been sufficient evidence for human rights organizations to declare them political prisoners, whose release has been consistently demanded by the UN and other international structures. According to the Crimean Human Rights Groups, at least 40 Ukrainian citizens are currently imprisoned on supposed ‘sabotage’ charges. They include Volodymyr Dudka and Oleksiy Bessarabov; civic journalist, nurse and human rights activist Iryna Danilovych; journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko; 65-year-old Oleh Prykhodko and two cousins, Asan and Aziz Akhtemov, who were arrested as part of Russia’s revenge persecution of Crimean Tatar leader, journalist and human rights activist Nariman Dzhelyal. In all of these cases, the Ukrainians were subjected to various, often savage, forms of torture and glaring violations of the right to a fair trial.
There are no grounds for believing that the unnamed Sevastopol man and Vladyslav Kisliakov are not also victims of such politically motivated persecution.