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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.

Russia sentences abducted Kherson oblast deputy to 12 years for refusal to collaborate

28.11.2024   
Halya Coynash
Ihor Protokovilo is one of many Ukrainian elected deputies, mayors, journalists, civic activists and other civilians whom Russia has been holding prisoner, usually incommunicado since 2022

Ihor Protokovilo Screenshot from the video footage posted by Saldo

Ihor Protokovilo Screenshot from the video footage posted by Saldo

A Russian occupation ‘court’ has passed an illegal 12-year sentence against Ihor Protokovilo almost three years after the deputy (member) of the Nova Kakhovka City Council was abducted by the Russian invaders.  The ‘sentence’, passed formally on ‘spying’ charges, was announced by Volodymyr Salldo, the Russian-installed head of occupied parts of Kherson oblast.  Unlike Saldo, Ihor Protokopilo was evidently unwilling to collaborate with the invaders of his country.  This was almost certainly the reason why he and many other public officials have been imprisoned since early 2022, and the real grounds for the legally nihilistic 12-year ‘sentence’.

Ihor Protokovilo was abducted from his home in Nova Kakhovka on 19 April 2022, with his whereabouts long unknown.  Judging by Saldo’s post on 26 November, it seems likely that he was held prisoner in one of the new SIZO, or remand prisons, which Russia opened in occupied Crimea during the months after its full-scale invasion.  While claiming that the ‘sentence’ was passed by what he called the ‘Kherson regional court’, he wrote the “the crime had been uncovered” by the Russian FSB in Crimea. This alone would indicate that an alleged ‘offence’ was fabricated after Protokovilo was seized in Kherson oblast and illegally transferred to occupied Crimea.  The post makes no mention of this, nor indeed of the fact that Protokovilo has already been held prisoner for almost three years, and that the ‘spying’ charges, under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code pertained to a time when Russia had not yet fabricated the ‘referendum’ used to fake justification for its annexation of occupied Kherson oblast.

The fact that he could not have ‘spied’ any later than April is, however, confirmed by the ‘indictment’.  This claims that in April 2022, Protokovilo used Messenger on his phone to pass on information to a Ukrainian Security Service [SBU] official about places of deployment of Russian military personnel.  All of this is, essentially, copy-pasted from multiple other such ‘sentences’ against Ukrainian civilian hostages.  So too is the following sentence, asserting that such information might have been used against Russian soldiers. 

The template nature of such pretexts for huge sentences on spying charges means that it is a matter of conjecture whether any such information was found on a telephone and / or passed on in any given case.  It would, in any case, have been entirely normal and legitimate for a Ukrainian citizen to be informing those involved in protecting his country about the movements of the invading army. 

This, of course, is not the position presented by traitor and collaborator Saldo. It is not only about the length of time that Protokovilo was held incommunicado without any charges being laid that Saldo is silent.  He also makes no mention of the fact that the ‘spying’ charges, under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code pertained to a time when Russia had not yet fabricated the ‘referendum’ used to fake justification for its annexation of occupied Kherson oblast.

He claims that “the court found the arguments of the Kherson regional prosecutor” [sic] convincing and sentenced Protokovilo to 12 years’ maximum-security imprisonment. 

With staggering mendacity, Saldo concludes by using the illegal sentence against a Ukrainian civilian held hostage since April 2022 to issue a menacing warning to all other Ukrainians “who have not yet understood that actions which harm Russia will be severely punished” and to encourage them to lodge denunciations with the Russian FSB.

Other ‘spying’ sentences

It is increasingly difficult to keep track of all these ‘sentences’ against Ukrainian civilians, most of whom were abducted in 2022 or 2023 and were almost certainly tortured by their captors.  

Oleh Kovalenko

Oleh Kovalenko Screenshot from the Russian video
Oleh Kovalenko Screenshot from the Russian video

On 26 November, the Russian state-controlled TASS reported that the same illegal ‘Kherson regional court’ had sentenced another Ukrainian, 33-year-old Oleh Kovalenko, to 12 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.  The charge was, yet again, under Article 276, with the same alleged gathering of information about places of deployment of Russian military personnel and technology.  This had, purportedly, been from March to August 2022, which would suggest that Kovalenko has been imprisoned for well over two years.

Maksym Makhno and Serhiy Tkachenko

On 18 November, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project reported that two Ukrainian civilians, Maksym Makhno and Serhiy Tkachenko had also received long sentences on ‘spying’ charges under Article 276.  The only difference was that these had been passed by the Rostov regional court in Russia. 

Judging by the indictment, it seems likely that the two Ukrainians were abducted in the second half of August, 2022.  Aside from the timing, the charges are broadly similar to those against Protokovilo and a huge number of other Ukrainian hostages.  It was claimed that Makhno had established contact with SBU officers in August 2022, and had, via Messeger, passed them information about the deployment of Russian military personnel and technology.  He had later, purportedly, passed his mobile telephone to a friend, i.e. Tkachenko, with the latter “establishing information about the deployment of the Russian armed forces with the help of Tkachenko.”

Both men were sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment, however Makhno’s sentence is to be in a maximum-security prison colony, Tkachenko’s in a ‘special regime’ colony, where the conditions are even worse. 

Memorial reports that, since July 2023, 18 ‘spying’ cases have been passed to the Rostov regional court, with all of them ending in ‘guilty verdicts’ and sentences.  In only half of the cases are the names of the defendants known.

There is terrifying anonymity about other cases also.  On 19 November 2024, the fake ‘Kherson regional court prosecutor’ reported another ‘sentence’ from the same illegitimate ‘Kherson regional court’.  Here an unnamed 20-year-old Ukrainian had been sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment under the same Article 276 (spying).  It is likely that he was abducted later, since the charge pertained to correspondence with a Ukrainian soldier in April 2023. 

See also:

Mariupol woman sentenced to 11 years in Russia’s mass copy-paste ‘spying trials’ against Ukrainians

Russia claims it ‘detained’ a young Ukrainian student on ‘spying charges’ two years after abducting her in Kherson region

Huge conveyor belt sentences against Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant engineer, other Ukrainians whom Russia abducted and tortured

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