Russia churns out surreal ‘terrorism’ sentences against Ukrainian POWs for defending Ukraine

Since October, Russia has staged four ‘trials’ of Ukrainian prisoners of war at its notorious Southern District Military Court in Rostov, with all four Ukrainian defenders receiving long sentences on insane ‘terrorism’ charges.  Unlike the huge number of illegal ‘trials’ of Ukrainian POWs reported after ‘sentences’ have been passed by fake ‘courts’ in occupied Donbas, Russia is not trying to conceal these fake ‘terrorism’ trials. Such openness is difficult to fathom as the details of court interrogations reported by monitors from the authoritative Memorial Society would be comical, were the sentences not so grotesquely high, with all passed against men who were almost certainly subjected to torture and ill-treatment.

Yury Bondarenko

32-year-old Yury Bondarenko, who is from Kyiv oblast, was sentenced on 29 October 2024 to 20 years’ imprisonment for defending Ukraine as part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Aidar Battalion (officially, the 24th Separate Assault Battalion). 

While there were concerns over the behaviour of some members of the Aidar Battalion after its formation as a volunteer formation in early 2014, in response to Russia’s military aggression in Donbas, Aidar formally became part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2015 and remains so to this day. 

Something that Russia is misleadingly terming “the ‘Aidar’ terrorist society’ was included in the FSB’s register of organizations which have been declared ‘terrorist’, purportedly in accordance with Russian legislation.  It is telling that the ruling labelling Aidar ‘terrorist’ was passed, on 25 September 2023, by the same Southern District Military Court involved in Bondarenko’s ‘trial’ and countless other trials of Ukrainian political prisoners. 

Russia has effectively demonstrated itself that the ruling was politically motivated and legally meaningless, as it has used ‘terrorism’ charges to imprison Ukrainians, like Volodymyr Linnyk, for involvement in Aidar seven years before the ruling declaring it ‘terrorist’. 

Yury Bondarenko is undoubtedly a prisoner of war, taken captive while serving in his country’s Armed Forces.  This fact was ignored by Russia, as was Bondarenko’s protected status and rights under the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War to which Russia is a party.  He was illegally charged, under Russian legislation with ‘involvement in the activities of a terrorist organization’, under Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code, and with ‘undergoing training in order to carry out terrorist activities’, under Article 205.3.

The so-called Russian ‘investigators’ tried to justify these charges by pointing out that Bondarenko had signed a contract on 19 March 2024 to serve in the 24th Separate Assault Battalion and had undergone training.  He had, from 31 March 2024 until he was forced to surrender on 8 April 2024, served at Ukrainian Armed Forces posts on, what Russia claims is “the territory of the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics”. 

In the vast majority of Russia’s ‘trials’ of Ukrainian POWs, it is claimed that the men ‘admitted guilt’, with any such alleged ‘confessions’ very often extracted through torture.  Here, in fact, Bondarenko did do what the ‘investigators’ asserted.  The difference is purely in Russia’s false claim that serving in the Armed Forces of his country which Russia is invading was somehow ‘terrorist activities’.  Bondarenko’s assertion that he ‘repents’ may have been obtained through torture, or the threat of an even worse sentence.

Memorial has posted a transcript from the court hearing on 29 October 2024 which highlights the absurdity of the charges laid against Bondarenko.  The POW explains that he was mobilized into the army on 6 February 2024.  In response to a question from his lawyer, he states that he discovered that the Aidar Battalion had been labelled ‘terrorist’ after he was taken prisoner. 

 At this point, the Russian prosecutor began grilling him on whether he had a choice of battalion or unit to join, whether he could have refused to join Aidar.  The Ukrainian defender was then forced to listen and respond to Russia’s narrative about its proxy ‘republics’ having purportedly voted for their sovereignty, etc. and claims about ‘attacks on the civilian population’. 

The ‘judge’ was Pavel Yurievich Gubarev, an individual who has already taken part in other political trials against Ukrainians.  It is simply impossible that he did not understand that he was imprisoning a prisoner of war whom Russia was illegally prosecuting for serving his country as part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.  Yet, on 29 October, he found Bondarenko ‘guilty’ of the charges and passed a 20-year term of imprisonment, with the first three years in a prison, the worst of Russian penal institutions, with the rest of the sentence in a maximum-security prison colony.

‘Azov’ Regiment charges

Russia’s supreme court issued a ruling on 2 August 2022, declaring the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Azov Regiment ‘terrorist’.  The ruling was widely seen as a pretext for persecuting Ukrainian prisoners of war, and the two men recently sentenced are, indeed, the latest of very many to receive huge sentences.

Vasyl Bovkun

35-year-old Vasyl Bovkun, who is from Kyiv, was sentenced on 17 October 2024 to 18 years’ imprisonment for supposed ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ (the same Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code).  The latter was how Russia chose to view the Azov Regiment.   Bovkun is also reported by Memorial to have fully admitted ‘guilt’. 

The sentence, of 18 years in a maximum-security prison colony was passed by Southern District Military Court ‘judge’ Timur Khabasovich Mashukov.

Volodymyr Tkhor

The 38-year-old soldier from the Azov Regiment was among the forces instructed to surrender in May 2022 and has clearly been imprisoned since then.  He was sentenced by Ilya Nikolaevich Bezgub from the Southern District Military Court on 21 November to five and a half years’ imprisonment in a medium-security prison colony, with the charge, yet again, of ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’.  Any sentence is too much, but it is unclear why these two sentences differ so greatly, with neither POW having denied the charges.

Roman Ponomarenko

On 22 October, ‘judge’ Aleksandr Vasilievich Generalov, who has also taken part in imprisoning Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners, sentenced Ponomarenko to 18 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.  Ponomarenko, who is 46 and from Luhansk oblast, appears to have served as a medic in the Ukrainian National Guard’s Donbas Battalion. 

Ponomarenko was charged with the same ‘involvement in the activities of a terrorist organization’, under Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code, and with ‘undergoing training in order to carry out terrorist activities’, under Article 205.3.  On this occasion, the charges are purely because Ponomarenko had served in Ukraine’s ‘Donbas’ Battalion.  They are, in fact, especially chilling given that the FSB Register of so-called ‘terrorist organizations’ states that the ruling, declaring the Donbas 46th Assault Battalion of Ukraine’s Armed Forces ‘terrorist’, was passed by the Southern District Military Court on the day the sentence was passed, 22 October 2024.