Ukrainian POW sentenced to 18 years as Russia mass produces legally nonsensical ‘terrorism trials'
Russia’s Southern District Military Court has sentenced 38-year-old Oleksiy Maksymov to 18 years on profoundly cynical ‘terrorism’ charges based solely on Russia’s extraordinary claim that the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Azov Regiment is ‘a terrorist organization’. The sentence coincided with another ‘terrorist’ verdict and huge sentence against 33-year-old Maksym Vorobiov, a civilian illegally seized in occupied Melitopol. According to the authoritative Memorial Society, these were just two of at least 75 prosecutions against Ukrainians at this one court, which has been notorious for churning out politically motivated verdicts against Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners since 2014.
Oleksiy Maksymov
Now aged 38, Maksymov, who is from Mariupol, joined the Azov Regiment in 2018, serving as a mechanic, repairing military vehicles. His contract with the Ukrainian Armed Forces had been due to expire at the beginning of May 2022, however Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine got in the way. He was asked by his commander to move to one of the bunkers at the Azovstal Steel Works and repair vehicles which he did, as much as was possible given the lack of equipment, until 16 May 2022 when he, and the other Ukrainian defenders, were taken prisoner.
International monitors believe that Russia tortures at least 90% of the Ukrainian prisoners of war [POW] that it is illegally holding in notorious remand prisoners [SIZO], like that in Tagenrog, where Maksymov is currently imprisoned. Members of the Azov Regiment have been especially savagely treated, including through grotesque ‘trials’ under Russian legislation. These are in violation of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, but also infringe fundamental principles of law, such as that the law is not retroactive. Maksymov was charged under several ‘terrorism’ charges although he has been in Russian captivity since May 2022, and Russia’s subservient ‘Supreme court’ only issued an absurd ruling, declaring the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Azov Regiment ‘terrorist’ on 2 August 2022.
On the basis, solely, of a flawed and political ‘supreme court’ ruling, Maksymov was charged under two articles of Russia’s criminal code with ‘taking part in a terrorist society’ and ‘undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities’.
Maksymov’s lawyer pointed out the fact that Mariupol had not, as the prosecution claimed, been part of Russia’s proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ during the period over which Maksymov was charged, and that the Azov Regiment had only been declared ‘terrorist’ several months later. All of this was ignored by the ‘judges’, as was Maksymov’s role as mechanic in the Regiment. On 26 October, they passed a sentence of 18 years in a maximum-security prison colony, with this just one year less than that demanded by the prosecutor.
Maksym Vorobiov
Vorobiov is 33 and from occupied Melitopol. He was sentenced on 26 October by the same Southern District Military Court to 16 years’ maximum security imprisonment, with the first three years in the particularly harsh conditions of a Russian prison. He was also ordered to pay a totally prohibitive fine of half a million roubles.
It was claimed that, in 2023, Vorobiov had become a member of a group whose plan was to organize ‘terrorist attacks’ and sabotage in occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia oblast. He was also supposed to have roped inan acquaintance, Maksym Timofieiev The two men had, purportedly, taken homemade explosives from a hiding place and used them from April to June 2023 to blow up three locomotive engines at the Melitopol depo.
He too was accused of ‘taking part in a terrorist organization’; ‘abetting terrorist activities’; ‘carrying out a terrorist act by a group of people by prior conspiracy’ and ‘unlawful purchase, possession, etc of explosives’.
Since Vorobiov, who spoke in court of having a 9-year-old child, whose childhood he did not wish to miss, fully admitted the charges and cooperated with the prosecution, the sentence is extraordinarily brutal. Whether or not Vorobiov’s ‘confession’ means that he committed the impugned actions cannot be known. Russia regularly uses torture to extract such ‘confessions’, as well as the threat of an even worse sentence. In any case, the aggressor state, which invaded and is illegally occupying Melitopol and using the railway for its war of aggression against Vorobiov’s country, has no right to bring any prosecution under Russian legislation against a Melitopol resident, nor to forcibly imprison him on the invader’s territory.
Many other Ukrainian victims..
According to the Russian independent media Proekt, almost 20% of the ‘terrorism’ prosecutions that Russia came up in 2023, were against Ukrainians. Most, if not all, are either already recognized political prisoners, or are likely to be recognized as such. They include Crimean Tatar civic activists and journalists, against whom Russia is using ‘terrorism’ charges as part of its offensive against the Crimean Tatar human rights movement in Crimea. In those cases, as with members of the Azov or Aidar regiments, flawed ‘supreme court’ rulings outlawing organizations or military formations which are totally legal in Ukraine, are used to try to justify sentences of 15-20 years, or even life imprisonment.