Russian FSB abduct Ukrainian from her mother’s funeral in occupied Crimea

Russia only admitted to holding Liudmyla Kolesnikova prisoner three months after she was seized by Russian FSB officers in occupied Yalta during the funeral of her mother.  After illegally holding the 34-year-old Ukrainian incommunicado from June to the beginning of October, they then produced grotesque ‘treason’ charges.  

This case is chilling even by Russian standards as nothing at all was known about Liudmyla’s plight until the FSB finally fabricated charges, It was after she was formally remanded in custody on 3 October that she was able to write to a volunteer who raised the alarm.   

In her letter, Liudmyla Kolesnikova (b. 1.03.1990) explains that she had been living in Ireland since 2022.  Although she earlier studied law, in Ireland she was retraining as a cosmetologist.  She arrived in Yalta in June 2024 to attend her mother’s funeral and was taken prisoner by FSB officers at the cemetery. This was an abduction, not an arrest, since Liudmyla was held prisoner for several months, without any formal charges being laid, with no acknowledgement that she was in Russian captivity and with no access (then, or seemingly now)  to an independent lawyer.  The FSB typically use such methods to extract ‘confessions’ through torture and / or intense psychological pressure and threats.

Both parents have died, and Liudmyla has nobody in occupied Crimea.  The FSB were, in any case, not admitting to having detained her, and she was held without any spare clothes, items of hygiene, etc.  She had pleaded with her captors to at least go to the apartment and let her cat outside, but was ignored, with the cat left to starve to death

The pretext for the ‘treason through spying’ charges appears to have been the fact that back in 2022 Kolesnikova bought two NFT ‘Russian warship’ stamps, at a cost of 25 euros, to buy drones.  This, however, was only ascertained after the FSB gained access to Koleksnikova’s telephone.  It looks very much as though the FSB seized the young Ukrainian and held her prisoner ‘on the off chance’, before coming up with an excuse for charges against her. For a donation of 25 euros to help Ukraine fight for its survival, Liudmyla Kolesnikova is facing a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.

This is the second time a young Ukrainian citizen has been seized by the Russians and illegally held prisoner for many months before being officially ‘arrested’ and charged with ‘spying’.  In December 2022, 25-year-old Crimean Tatar Leniye Umerova was seized as she crossed the border between Georgia and Russia, trying to reach occupied Crimea where her father had recently been diagnosed with cancer.  She was imprisoned on a series of absurd administrative charges until May 2023 when the FSB charged her with ‘spying’.  Such charges have become especially common since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with a major reason doubtless the fact that the FSB can block all information about such cases, with the ‘trials’ taking place behind closed doors, and long sentences without any possibility of scrutiny guaranteed.  Leniye was, thankfully, released as part of an exchange of prisoners on 24 August this year.  Very many others, both men and women, remain imprisoned, and, like Liudymyla Kolesnikova, in desperate need of public attention and pressure on Russia to ensure their release.

Olha Skrypnyk, Head of the Crimean Human Rights Group recently reported that Russia’s use of ‘treason’ and ‘spying’ charges against Ukrainians in Crimea has intensified over the past year, with Russia using such charges much more widely since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and     at least 50 Ukrainian citizens from Crimea have faced or are currently facing such fabricated charges

Liudmyla’s letter and details of the collection here, with the Telegram channel in her defence at https://t.me/freeKolesnikova