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war crimes in Ukraine

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.

Ukrainian POWs tortured for ‘confessions’ to Russia's war crimes and for show trials

28.10.2024   
Halya Coynash
While the release of Maksym Butkevych does provide some hope, Russia is churning out a terrifying number of insane sentences against Ukrainian defenders after extracting ‘confessions’ through torture

From left Oleksiy Khmara, Oleksiy Kazymov

From left Oleksiy Khmara, Oleksiy Kazymov

Russian propaganda channels have announced new ‘sentences’ against Ukrainian prisoners of war, with men held incommunicado forced into taking part in staged and video ‘confessions and statements of repentance.’  Given estimates from UN monitors that as many as 90% of Ukrainian prisoners of war are subjected to torture by the Russians, there are no grounds for believing such supposed ‘confessions’ which typically constitute the only alleged ‘evidence’ against the imprisoned Ukrainian defenders.

As well as the horrific sentences handed down by unrecognized and illegal occupation ‘courts’, it is the template-like nature of the charges that make these Russian propaganda stunts so sinister. 

Oleksiy Khmara

On 22 October 2024, TASS reported that an (unrecognized) ‘court’ in occupied Donetsk had sentenced 31-year-old Ukrainian marine Oleksiy Khmara to 22 years’ maximum-security imprisonment “for killing a civilian”. It was claimed that he had done this “in March 2022” at a public transport stop on Nikolsky Avenue in Mariupol.  Khmara is then shown on a video being ‘interrogated’ by a person who is not shown.  He states that he is accused of ‘homicide’; that he had been patrolling at night and stopped because he assumed two men to be “saboteurs” and fired from his machine gun.  He then says, as though reeling off a learned phrase, that he admits the charges and fully repents.

Such pseudo ‘confessions’ are typically taped at the very beginning, with the ‘prosecution’ not too worried about any discrepancies.  In the version apparently reported by Russia’s ‘Investigative Committee’, Khmara was supposed to have killed one civilian on 12 March 2022 because the latter “did not carry out his order to stop”.  This was the third week of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a Ukrainian defender had every reason to issue such an order, and to fear that this person, who did not stop when asked, could open fire on him. 

Thus, unlike Russia’s bombing of a maternity hospital on 9 March 2022 and of the Drama Theatre, thought to have been used as a shelter by over a thousand civilians, on 16 March 2022, Khmara’s alleged shooting of a person who did not stop and could have been a  Russian, did not constitute an obvious attack on civilian(s). 

Russia, however, is trying to rewrite the facts and present Ukraine has having committed war crimes.  The unrecognized and illegitimate ‘Donetsk people’s republic high court’ under unnamed ‘judges’, after an unknown number of ‘court hearings’, found Khmara ‘guilty’ of murder (Article 105 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code) and of the use of prohibited methods of war (Article 356 § 1).  It is also not mentioned whether the Ukrainian marine had access to an independent lawyer, but this seems unlikely.

Oleksiy Kazymov

On 24 October, Russian occupation sites claimed that the same illegitimate ‘court’ had handed down a life sentence against the 27-year-old unit commander within the marines, Oleksiy Kazymov. He was accused of ordering his unit to shell Myrne in Mariupol in 2022, with this under the above-mentioned Article 356 of Russia’s criminal code.  A Ukrainian marine was thus charged with shelling civilians in March 2022, at a time when Russia was bombing and shelling Mariupol, other Ukrainian cities on a daily basis.

On 3 July 2024, Kazymov had already been sentenced to 26 years on similar charges, with the Investigative Committee showing one of its propaganda videos.

Dmytro Pavlovsky, Edward Petrov, Yevhen Yermolenko

Russia’s Investigative Committee reported bulk sentences on 23 October against three marines – 27-year-old Dmytro Pavlovsky; Edward Petrov (31) and Yevhen Yermolenko (28).  They too were accused of having shelled Myrne on 8 March 2022, with it claimed that a man had died as a result.  Pavlovsky and Petrov were sentenced to 24 years’ maximum-security imprisonment; Yermolenko – 25 years.

These are only the latest of many such sentences which violate the Third Geneva Convention, as well as fundamental principles of a fair trial.  It is very likely that all the men have been subjected to torture and held in appalling conditions. 

There is one ray of hope since the last report of such conveyor belt sentences. 34 prisoners of war from the Azov Regiment were finally released in an exchange of prisoners on 19 October, together with Maksym Butkevych, well-known journalist and human rights activist.  He had been taken prisoner after joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces after Russia’s full-scale invasion and ‘sentenced’ to 13 years’ imprisonment on equally shocking charges.

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