Ukrainian political prisoner imprisoned for 10 years in Russia’s revenge for Euromaidan is 'released', yet not freed
Andriy Kolomiyets has been released from the Russian prison colony where he was imprisoned for almost ten years on surreal charges linked with Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity, or Euromaidan in Kyiv. He remains effectively imprisoned, however, since he has been moved to a deportation centre, with it unclear how long he will be held there.
Andriy’s wife Galina has told the Crimean Human Rights Group that Andriy had called her from the deportation centre in Krasnodar krai. He is there with two young men from Kherson oblast, one of whom has been imprisoned there for a year and a half, the other for two and a half years. It is thus unclear how long he too will remain there, with the only difference at present being that she was, at least, able to pass him ordinary clothes, rather than those he was forced to wear in the prison colony. Other than that, those held in the detention centres are, to all intents and purposes, imprisoned. There have been reports recently that such limbo, where people are, in theory, not serving any sentence, but are still imprisoned, is being deliberately used by the Russians as pressure to try to force men into agreeing to fight in Ukraine. The situation is particularly serious as those held in such centres typically have no access to lawyers, for example, when ‘courts’ extend their ‘stay’ in the centres. They themselves do not have the money, and their families are in another country and cannot organize such legal aid. Nor are these the only obstacles. In a recent report, Caucasus Realities mentioned also that few lawyers are willing to represent Ukrainians, presumably fearing that their remuneration for legal services, or even pro bono assistance, could get them charged with anything from ‘spying’ to ‘treason’. It is telling that the one lawyer providing legal assistance whom they spoke with asked not to be named. He did, however, stress that all of this violates the Ukrainians’ basic rights. It is also terrifyingly possible that people could remain imprisoned there until the end of Russia’s war against Ukraine, as the state of war means that there is currently no mechanism for organizing such expulsions directly.
Andriy is a recognized political prisoner whose release had been demanded by international bodies and human rights organizations since 2015. Hopefully, a third country will be able to help ensure that he is properly free after ten years of Russian captivity.
The persecution of Andriy Kolomiyets demonstrates that Russia’s torture and lawlessness did not begin with the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but back in 2014. It is also telling that three of Russia’s first Ukrainian political prisoners – Valentyn Vyhivsky; Oleksandr Kostenko and Andriy Kolomiyets had taken part in the pro-EU Euromaidan protests from November 2013 to February 2014 which first torpedoed Moscow’s attempts to gain political control over Ukraine without openly invading. If all three men, and a significant percentage of all Russia’s Ukrainian political prisoners, faced horrific levels of torture, the charges against Kostenko and Kolomiyets stood out for their breathtakingly cynical lawlessness.
Kolomiyets, who is from Kyiv oblast, was just 22 when arrested on 15 May 2015 in the Northern Caucuses of Russia where he was living with his partner (now wife) Galina and her four children. The first thing that the officers said to Galina before taking Andriy away was that the young Ukrainian was a Maidan activist.
Although the officers made two different, but equally absurd, attempts to justify Kolomiyets’ detention by claiming to have ‘found’ a small amount of hashish, it was clear from the outset that this was a pretext. The real, if entirely surreal, plan was to charge Kolomiyets with an implausible and quite unprovable ‘offence’ linked with Euromaidan.
Kolomiyets was taken to occupied Crimea where he was accused of having thrown a Molotov cocktail at two Berkut officers from Crimea, then helping the regime of Viktor Yanukovych to try to crush the protests. The alleged Molotov cocktail was supposed to have “caused them pain”, although neither Berkut officer had sought medical treatment nor had the supposed ‘attack’ ever been reported. These two individuals, who had since betrayed their oath of allegiance to Ukraine, appeared at the occupation ‘court’ and claimed to remember Kolomiyets. The Kremlin-installed ‘prosecutor’ and ‘judges’ were undeterred by the lack of any documented evidence for such an incident, which would, in any case, have involved only Ukrainian citizens on Ukrainian territory and subject to Ukrainian law. Instead, the prosecutor claimed, and a Russian-controlled ‘court’ in Simferopol accepted, that this alleged attack came under Article 30 § 3 and 105 § 2 of the Russian criminal code, namely “attempted murder of 2 or more people in connection with their official activities … out of motives of political and ideological hatred”.
Kolomiyets, who had been in custody since May 2015, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment: six years for the alleged ‘attack’ on the two ex-Berkut turncoats (Article 105 of the Russian criminal code), and four for the supposed possession of hashish (Article 228). The sentence was upheld on October 27 by the occupation ‘Crimean high court’ under ‘judge’ Halyna Redko who had already taken part in at least one other politically-motivated trial since betraying her oath to Ukraine.
Memorial (then still the Memorial Human Rights Centre) took little time in declaring Kolomiyets a political prisoner. It demolished the narcotics charges against the young man, while stating simply that the main indictment was grotesque since a court under Russian legislation could have no jurisdiction over events allegedly taking place between Ukrainian nationals in Ukraine. It also pointed to Kolomiyets’ own account of the savage torture to which he was subjected.