The occupation ‘Sevastopol municipal court’ has sentenced Serhiy Bodnarashyk to 14 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the 46-year-old Ukrainian convicted of ‘state treason’ against Russia. Such sentences are reported on an almost daily basis, with details scarce and those available almost identical from ‘trial’ to ‘trial’. Such mass demonstrations pf ‘state treason’, as well as the number of Crimeans prosecuted for waving the Ukrainian flag; playing Ukraine’s national anthem or expressing opposition to Russia’s war against Ukraine suggest that Russia is clearly unconvinced about the supposed ‘ground-level support’ it constantly claims to enjoy in Crimea and other occupied parts of Ukraine.
Serhiy Bodnarashyk
As is often the case, we know only as much about the charges against Serhiy Bodnarashyk as the Russian occupation ‘Sevastopol prosecutor’ has revealed. It is unclear whether there was a ‘trial’ as such, or merely a hearing, that reported on 22 August 2025, at which the ‘guilty’ verdict was announced and sentence passed.
The prosecution claimed, as it virtually always does in one form or another, that Bodnarashyk had passed on information about Russia’s military to the Ukrainian Security Service. In this case, it was alleged to have been information about the positioning of anti-aircraft systems in occupied Sevastopol. He had, purportedly, passed on photographs and other information about the places where military and special technology was deployed, over a period from January through October 2023, It was claimed that he had contacted people from Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] via Telegram.
Given the absence of any reliable information as to when Bodnarashyk was ‘arrested’, such an alleged timeframe can sometimes indicate that he has been in Russian captivity since late 2023. Bodnarashyk was, however, the victim of a politically motivated administration prosecution in June 2024, so was probably seized after that. Most ominously, it is quite possible that charges were laid significantly later, with an ever-increasing number of such ‘arrests’ much more like enforced disappearances. Men and women vanish and are held incommunicado sometimes for many months, or even years, without any official status, and without contact with an independent lawyer.
This was certainly a blitzkrieg ‘trial’ given that the occupation ‘prosecutor’ had only reported sending the ‘case to the court’ on 15 August, and there were reports that Bodnarashyk had been ‘detained’ in Russian state media on 1 August 2025. It is inconceivable, however conveyor belt-like these ‘trials’ are, that the Ukrainian was ‘arrested’ on 1 August 2025 and sentenced just three weeks later.
Bodnarashyk was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum-security prison colony, to be followed by a further year of restricted liberty. The ‘court’ also ordered that he pay a 200 thousand rouble fine.
Mediazona has looked through Bodnarashyk’s pages on Odnoklassniki and VKontakte, and reports that he was born in 1978 in Chernivtsi but moved to Sevastopol where he joined the local Institute of Nuclear Energy and Industry. He had spoken out over Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and was, for such words, prosecuted on an administrative charge of ‘discrediting the Russian armed forces’ and fined 30 thousand roubles in August 2024. That alone would place the Ukrainian in danger of being targeted by the Russian FSB, as appears to have happened.
Russia has begun churning out sentences for so-called ‘state treason’, with the sharp increase beginning with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia cynically applies the charge of ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code on the grounds that a person has Russian citizenship. It has, however, made it impossible to live on any occupied territory without a Russian passport, and such citizenship is clearly not a question of choice.
The charge is convenient for Russia’s FSB as the ‘trial’ is then held behind closed doors, with this fully concealing the likely lack of any grounds for the charges and fabricated evidence. More and more Crimeans, including several women, have vanished after being seized with the FSB in some cases holding the person incommunicado, without charges having been laid for a very long time, with this period likely to be used for torture and other forms of duress, aimed at extracting ‘confessions’.
Dmytro Myskov
Even less is known about 45-year-old Dmytro Myskov from Sevastopol, who was also convicted of ‘treason’ on 26 August 2025. He was sentenced by the occupation ‘Sevastopol city court’ to 14 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, followed by a year of restricted liberty , as well as a 200 thousand rouble fine.
He was accused of having passed on information about the places of deployment of Russian Black Sea Fleet ships from July to September 2024, with this supposedly for Ukraine’s Security Service.
See also:
Lera Dzhemilova
Ismail Shemshedinov
Victoria Strilets and her daughter Oleksandr Strilets; Oleksandr Osadchy
Many others
