73-year-old Melitopol pensioner sentenced to 14 years in Russia’s conveyor belt ‘treason’ trials for supporting Ukraine
Oleksandr Markov, a 73-year-old pensioner from occupied Markov has been sentenced by an illegal occupation ‘court’ to 14 years’ imprisonment for donating money to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. This is one of a mounting number of horrific sentences for so-called ‘state treason’ against Ukrainians on occupied territory, seized, probably tortured and ‘tried’ for supporting their own country.
Russia is a party to the Geneva Convention which prohibit an occupying state from applying its legislation on occupied territory. It is not only flouting this but is doing so in a shockingly cynical manner by bringing ‘treason’ charges under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code. Markov will have been left with no choice but to take Russian citizenship, as otherwise his pension would not have been paid, and he would have had no access to healthcare (to name just two of multiple methods being used by the invaders to foist their citizenship). Russia is then using the fact of a Russian passport to claim that a Ukrainian living on Ukrainian territory committed ‘treason’ by supporting the defenders of his country.
According to the Russian FSB, from October 2023 to May 2024, Markov used a mobile app to make 16 money transfers of almost 15 thousand UAH (around 37 thousand roubles) “to the Ukrainian Security Service”. The money was to be used to provide material support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Russia claimed that this constituted ‘providing financial aid to a foreign state [sic!] , the actions of which are aimed against the security of the Russian Federation’.
Although the ‘sentence’ was purportedly passed by the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ in Melitopol, it was reported on 19 February by the ‘prosecutor’ in occupied Crimea. Markov was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum-security prison colony, with this to be followed, were the 73-year-old to survive, by a further year’s restriction of liberty.
This is one of a mounting number of ‘trials’ in occupied Ukraine of Ukrainians persecuted for donations to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. It is unclear whether such donations came to light during a check of Markov’s phone, or whether Russia is forcing providers or banks on occupied territory to disclose such information.
Liubov Voinova
Another Ukrainian from Melitopol, Liubov Voinova (b. 24.02.1977) has also been sentenced to 14 years on ‘treason’ charges, with the ‘sentence’ passed by the illegal ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ back in November 2024 having been upheld at appeal level.
It was claimed that, in August 2023, Voinova had passed information about the movement of Russian military vehicles to Ukraine’s Military Defence. The phrase used here, that this could have been used to strike at places of deployment of the Russian military’ is copy-pasted from one such report to another.
Russia is an invading force and cannot turn the facts and the law on their head by claiming that such passing of information, had it actually occurred, constituted ‘state treason’ with respect to the aggressor state.
In November 2024, RIA-Melitopol reported that Liubova Voinova had spent a year and a half in captivity before the sentence. Up till now she was imprisoned in a SIZO [remand prison) in occupied Crimea. It is not known how long she was held before any formal ‘detention’ was acknowledged and charges laid.
The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project has recognized the persecution as very likely politically motivated. The same would doubtless be true of Oleksandr Markov and a very large number of other Ukrainians sentenced in such cases, with the only impediment being the restricted information.
Treason trials as a weapon against Ukrainians
Memorial reported in September 2024 that the first sharp increase in sentences on ‘treason’ and ‘spying’ charges under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code coincided with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014. In that first year, the number of people sentenced under Article 275 quadrupled. There was a small reduction in such cases in 2017, followed, from a gradual rise from 2018 to 2022. There was, however, a sharp rise in the number of cases on, for example, disclosing state secrets (Article 283) and unlawfully gaining access to such secrets (Article 283.1). All of this, Memorial says, was part of a conscious state policy and propaganda aimed at creating a wartime atmosphere in society, with this involving hunting out ‘a fifth column’ and ‘traitors’.
In these statistics, Memorial does not distinguish between cases in Russia and those in occupied Ukraine. Until the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there were (and remain) Ukrainians imprisoned on ‘spying’ charges, but the numbers were significantly lower than they are now (10-20). In occupied Crimea, Russia concentrated more on fabricating prosecutions for supposed ‘terrorism’ or ‘sabotage’.
There was a huge increase in such ‘treason’ / ‘treason through spying’ charges following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Such charges began to be very actively used to persecute people in one way or another connected with Ukraine.
In occupied parts of Ukraine, such charges – of ‘spying’ (under Article 276, if the person has not received a Russian passport) or of ‘treason’ (Article 275) are now used terrifyingly often. In very many cases, Russia has first abducted civilians, held them incommunicado, without any charges being laid, and then sentences them to 10-15 years’ imprisonment on supposed ‘spying’ charges.
See also:
Anastasia Todurova
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Hanna Yeltsova
Ivan Semykoz
Russia sentences Ukrainian to 8.5 years for donation as a teenager to Ukraine’s Azov Regiment
Oksana Ivanchenko
Danylo Yefimov
19-year-old from occupied Donbas sentenced to 12 years for donation for Ukrainian defenders