The Russian occupation ‘Kherson regional prosecutor’ has reported yet another fake ‘trial’ on spying charges and long sentence, while distorting or remaining silent about certain critical facts. Vladyslav Bily is described merely as a “local resident”, with no mention made of the fact that he was abducted by the Russian invaders of Nova Kakhovka (Kherson oblast) back in March 2022, soon after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The only indication of this comes in the fact that the supposed ‘spying’ was in March 2022.
The ‘sentence’, reported on 6 December 2024 as being under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code, was supposedly handed down by the occupation ‘Kherson regional court’, an anonymous body for stamping the ‘sentences’ which Russia, as occupying state’ has no right to issue. It is claimed, with particular cynicism, given that Bily had been abducted from his home in Nova Kakhovka, that “the crime was uncovered and investigated by officers of Russia’s FSB” [security service] in occupied Crimea. Other than that, the ‘indictment’ could have been copy-pasted from any number of other such ‘trials’ and sentences that Russia has been imposing on Ukrainian civilians illegally abducted from areas that have fallen under occupation. Bily is claimed to have, while in Nova Kakhovka, gathering information about the movement and places of deployment of military technology and Russian military personnel, and sent this, via Messenger, to an official of Ukraine’s Security Service.”.
The lack of any mention of the fact that Vladyslav Bily has been in Russian captivity since March 2022 is of particular concern given that a sentence would normally be dated from when a person was remanded in custody.
Russia, however, is taking civilians hostage, and holding them incommunicado, without any formal status or official charges being laid. Although Vladyslav Bily (b. 21 March 1987) was abducted in March 2022, his disappearance was, according to IRC-South, only reported in Autumn 2023, with no information as to his whereabouts.
It was only on 18 September 2024, that Russian propaganda media announced that Bily, whom they described as “a Ukrainian spy” was to go on ‘trial’, accused of passing on information to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It was claimed that the Crimean occupation prosecutor had passed the ‘prosecution’ to the so-called ‘regional court’ in occupied Kherson oblast. The report then seemed largely for propaganda purposes, as all Russian ‘spying trials’, even those that are not in flagrant violation of international law, are held behind closed doors. In those cases involving Ukrainian civilian hostages, there are effectively no grounds for hoping that the hostage had any access to an independent lawyer or any vestiges of a fair trial.
See also:
Russia sentences abducted Kherson oblast deputy to 12 years for refusal to collaborate
