Russia brings ‘spying’ charges after abducting and torturing young Ukrainian with serious psychiatric condition
Russia is to stage yet another ‘spying’ trial against a Ukrainian from occupied Ukraine, with the victim this time a 24-year-old from Melitopol abducted almost two years ago and savagely tortured. Leonid Popov was diagnosed in 2018 with undifferentiated schizophrenia and became so emaciated and unwell after the torture he endured that even his Russian captors were forced to allow his hospitalization. Instead of allowing him home afterwards, he was again taken prisoner. It was learned in November 2024 that Russia is charging him with ‘spying’. The charge is absurd, yet a favourite with Russia’s FSB, not least because ‘trials’ can be held behind closed doors, thus concealing the lack of any grounds for charges carrying an effectively guaranteed sentence of from 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment.
After almost three years of Russian occupation, information about the Ukrainian civilians held hostage is often scant. Here all details have come from the Russian independent publication Important Stories [Istories’] , who cite Oleksiy Ladukhin, a lawyer from the human rights NGO Every Human Being who is, thankfully, helping Leonid’s parents.
Leonid’s mother has explained that her son was a musically and academically gifted child, with a phenomenal memory. It was as an adolescent that his behaviour changed radically, and, in 2018, he was officially diagnosed as suffering from undifferentiated schizophrenia (a mixture of three types, with symptoms including disorganized behaviour and thoughts; as well as delusions or hallucinations). Anna Makhno says that her son is naïve like a child, can easily fall under the influence of others and does not understand people’s emotions.
It is next to impossible that his captors did not understand that the young man was extremely vulnerable when they abducted him in April 2023. Leonid simply vanished without trace with his family knowing nothing for three months. Then in July, he was taken to the Melitopol hospital in a state “near death”. He was severely emaciated, weighing just 40 kilograms (with a height of almost two metres), and was scarcely aware what was happening.
It was thanks to another patient in the ward that he was able to contact his parents. He wrote: “Mama, you told me that there is a Hell, well I have been in Hell. I was so afraid to fall asleep, fearing that they would come and suffocate me, kill me. I also wanted so much to live, but they didn’t give me any water. And more than anything, I wanted food. They beat me badly, they beat me so hard that for four days I couldn’t go to the toilet. For what, Mama?”
The ill-treatment, torture and stress that he was forced to endure exacerbated his psychological disorder; he began to lose his memory and his sense of reality. According to his mother, his reactions are like those of a child who cannot understand what is happening and is terrified.
Leonid was in hospital for two weeks. After this period, his father received a call from a representative of the Russian occupation ‘Investigative Committee’ This individual stated that they were releasing Leonid for want of any elements of a crime. At that stage, therefore, the Russians had come close to killing Leonid but were not accusing him of anything.
This, however, was not the end. When his father took Leonid home, they were approached by Russian military, who put a bag over the young man’s head and took him away.
We can only imagine how paralyzed with fear and distressed Leonid must have been. His family have had no contact with him since then.
Immediately after Leonid was taken away, his father lodged a formal report that his son had been abducted. Criminal proceedings were, apparently, even (formally) initiated, however in December 2023, Leonide’s father was called into the ‘Investigative Committee’ and shown a photo of his son, supposedly sent by the FSB. On the photo, Leonid had, doubtless, been terrorized into holding up a piece of paper with the words “I’m OK. I refuse to reveal my whereabouts”. This, it should be said, is a standard FSB ploy with political prisoners often forced into signing notes supposedly rejecting the services of an independent lawyer. It is inconceivable that Leonid wrote this of his own volition, with the photo then used to force his father to withdraw the report about his abduction, as he had, purportedly, been “found”.
The NGO Every Human Being sent formal demands for information to the FSB in the autumn of 2023-24. They received a response which clamed that Leonid had not been detained, and that no ‘investigative measures’ were underway.
It was a full year later, in November 2024 that ‘spying charges’ under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code were reported. With chilling cynicism, the Russian FSB are asserting that the proceedings were only initiated in August 2024, 15 months after Leonid was first abducted and a year after his faked ‘release’.
The publication reports that the same individual, A.R. Dzhambulatov, signed both the document denying that Leonid had been detained, and the document, supposedly from August 2024, initiating criminal proceedings. This individual is probably Anzor Ruslanovych Dzhambulatov, earlier the deputy head of the FSB in Chechnya and, seemingly, now installed by the Russian invaders as occupation ‘deputy head of the FSB ‘ in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast.
The lawlessness Is terrifying, as is the fact that Leonid Popov has been held in appalling conditions, more than likely tortured, and deprived of the medication which he had been prescribed by his psychiatrist. Oleksiy Ladukhin is, unfortunately, right in warning that ‘convictions’ are guaranteed in such ‘spying trials’. His hope is now that Leonid Popov can be added to one of the next exchanges of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia.
Leonid’s life very likely depends on this.