Russia passes copy-pasted 12-year ‘spying sentence almost three years after abducting Ukrainian teenager

An occupation ‘court’ in Russia’s fake ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [‘LPR’] has sentenced Artem Kudzhanov to 12 years’ imprisonment more than two and a half years after the young student, then 19, was abducted from his home and disappeared.  Not only do the ‘spying’ charges seem copy-pasted from those used in numerous other such ‘trials’, but they came after the teenager was held totally incommunicado for over a year and then accused of something quite different. 

The sentence was reported as having been passed by the so-called ‘LPR high court’ on 10 April 2025.  Kudzhanov had been accused and convicted of ‘spying’ under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code and sentenced to 12 years in a maximum-security [‘harsh-regime’] prison colony. It was claimed, as it always is, that Kudzhanov had, from July through August 2022, gathered information about the places of deployment of Russian military personnel, purportedly on the territory of ‘LPR’ [i.e. occupied Luhansk oblast) and passed this on to Ukraine’s Security Service.

As well as violating international law by applying its legislation on occupied territory, Russia is also using illegitimate kangaroo courts to churn out such ‘sentences’.  There is nothing to suggest that Kudzhanov’s right to a fair trial was, in any way, observed, and it is not even clear if there was more than the one ‘hearing’ for announcing the ‘verdict’. 

As reported, Artem Kudzhanov and his family are from the Luhansk oblast village of Bahachka.  In 2022, Artem was a student at a college in Siverskodonetsk, training to be a car mechanic.  Both Siverskodonetsk and Bahachka fell under Russian occupation after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. 

On 28 October 2022, armed ‘officers’ from the so-called ‘LPR ministry of state security’ burst into the Kudzhanov home and carried out a search.  The Media Initiative for Human Rights earlier reported that the Russians found a uniform from Artem’s elder brother’s military service, and also clearly saw something that they deemed ‘suspicious’ on Artem’s telephone.  Both 19-year-old Artem and his brother, who is a year older, were taken to an occupation ‘police station’.  Artem’s brother was released after several days, but not Artem, who was beaten, and, probably, tortured.

Artem disappeared, with his family knowing nothing of his whereabouts or even whether he was alive for over a year.  In the summer of 2024, they learned that Artem was charged, under Russian legislation, with ‘a knowingly false report about a terrorist attack’.

The next report was on 7 March when the ‘LPR prosecutor announced that Artem Kudzhanov, now 21, was to go on trial accused of spying for Ukraine.  No mention was made of Artem’s enforced disappearance, nor of the first excuse used a year after his abduction for his captivity.  This was no innocent omission, and it was typical that one Russian propaganda source even claimed that the young man had only now been ‘detained’.  Russia has understood that its enforced disappearances of Ukrainian civilians are being documented and were recently found to be crimes against humanity by the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine.  ‘Spying’ charges are by far the most convenient way of trying to ‘legitimize’ their illegal hostage-taking, with such ‘trials’, even when held in Russian courts, taking place behind closed doors. 

The 7 March report was accompanied by a video on which Artem, his face blurred, was shown very clearly trying to remember the words of his supposed ‘confession and repentance’.  It is near certain that the young man gave this under duress, and unlikely that he had an independent lawyer.

At the beginning of February 2024, when nothing was known of Kudzhanov’s whereabouts, the Russians abducted Artem’s father, 50-year-old Ibragim Kudzhanov from hospital. He was subsequently sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment on immensely cynical ‘terrorism’ charges over his role in defending Donbas as part of the Aidar Battalion.  Despite the fact that Aidar, and several other military units, form part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Russia has used its courts’ to issue bizarre rulings declaring the units ‘terrorist organizations’.  In Ibragim Kudzhanov’s case and in many others, it has ignored the fact that the men served in Aidar many years before the flawed Southern District Military Court ruling on 25 September 2023 pronouncing it ‘terrorist’.