A Russian occupation ‘court’ has sentenced Yevhen Horin to 23 years’ maximum-security imprisonment on multiple charges of ‘sabotage’, concocted after the Ukrainian prisoner of war was taken captive. As well as charges which misrepresent the military nature of the alleged ‘acts of sabotage’, Russia has also added a bizarre political nuance by claiming that Horin underwent official ‘training in sabotage activities’ in the United Kingdom.
Russia is not only illegally occupying a considerable part of Ukraine’s Kherson oblast, but is claiming that all of the oblast, including its regional centre, Kherson, ‘joined the Russian Federation’ in late September 2022. That has not stopped it from savagely bombing and shelling Kherson since it was liberated by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on 11 November 2022, nor from openly using drones to target and kill civilians on all unoccupied Kherson oblast territory. Such near-daily attacks did not, in turn, deter the Russian newspaper Kommersant from asserting that ‘the trial’ of Yevhen Horin had ended “in Kherson” on 26 June 2025.
Judging by the UA Losses website, Yevhen Horin, turned 40 on 18 May in Russian captivity, and had been recorded as missing since 28 February 2024. Originally from Mykolaiv, he is a senior marine in Ukraine’s 73rd Maritime Special Operations Centre and should be protected under international law as a prisoner of war, who was seized by the enemy while carrying out military duties. He took part in, and may have been the only survivor of a tragically unsuccessful attempt by the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces to make a landing on the Tendra Split in the Black Sea during the night from 28-29 February 2024.
Instead of treating him as a prisoner of war, Russia labelled him a ‘saboteur’ and staged a fake ‘trial’ before its occupation ‘Kherson regional court’, with this apparently taking place in occupied Crimea.
Kommersant asserts that Horin also “admitted to taking part in a plan to blow up a sea gas rig in the Black Sea”, with this the main charge against him, as well as a supposed plan to blow up equipment at a lighthouse.
The gas rig in question was, in fact, being used as a platform for military helicopters and as a radar station, and the lighthouse was, doubtless, also used for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. This means that both were legitimate military targets. In fact, however, there are compelling grounds for doubting any charges which would appear to be based on a ‘confession’ from a Ukrainian prisoner of war. Such ‘testimony’ has, in the vast majority of cases, been extracted through torture.
The Russian occupation ‘prosecutor’ made no mention of Horin’s capture, claiming instead that it had “been established” that he had been part of a group that tried to blow up a gas platform in the south-western Black Sea basin in January 2024. It was claimed that the gas platform in question belongs to an enterprise in Russian-occupied Crimea and that the explosion meant that it could not carry out its functions with no mention of the fact that the functions in question were military, and quite unconnected with digging for gas.
While Russia’s FSB reported that the operation by the Ukrainian marines had been overseen by a unit of the special submarine service of the British Royal Navy, the charges claimed that the training that Ukraine’s British allies had given was in “carrying out sabotage activities”. The Russian reports claim that Horin himself stated that, from October 2022 through January 2023, he had undergone special sabotage training at the 5 Rifles base of the Armoured Infantry Battalion in the United Kingdom. On the video circulated by the FSB, however, he reportedly only stated that their training was in spending the night in the forest, and on developing plans for operations from their base, presumably like the attempted landing on the Tendra Split.
Horin was convicted under multiple articles of Russia’s criminal code, which the aggressor state is illegally using against Ukrainians on occupied territory. As well as ‘sabotage’ under Article 281 § 2a, b and c, Horin was charged with illegally crossing “the Russian Federation’s state borders” (Article 322 § 3); smuggling explosive devices and substances, as well as firearms (Article 226.1 § 3); illegally moving firearms, explosives, etc. (under various parts of Article 222; of undergoing training for the purpose of carrying out sabotage activities (under Article 281.2).
He was sentenced, on 25 or 26 June, to 23 years’ maximum-security imprisonment and also ordered to pay a 700 thousand rouble fine.
