The occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ has sentenced Heorhiy Levchenko to 16 years on grotesque ‘treason’ and ‘extremism’ charges linked solely with the Melitopol journalist’s role as administrator to the Telegram channel RIA-Melitopol. The sentence comes just over two years after Levchenko and at least five other young Ukrainian Telegram administrators were seized by the Russians and later shown on Russian propaganda TV giving surreal ‘confessions’ almost certainly extracted through torture.
The occupation Crimean ‘prosecutor’ reported the sentence on 2 September 2025, stating that it had been passed by the above-mentioned occupation ‘court’ but in Crimea. Although no name is given, the man’s age (born in 1989) and other details correspond to Heorhiy Levchenko.
It was claimed that, “being an opponent of the special military operation” [Russia’s euphemism for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine], Levchenko had been administrator of a Telegram channel popular in Zaporizhzhia oblast since 2022.
“Through a message received from a subscriber, he received information about the movement and places of deployment of Russian military personnel which he sent to a chat-bot used by officers of Ukraine’s Security Service. The said information was correct and could have been used against the interests of the Russian Federation.”
While this appears to suggest that there was one message which was passed on, the ‘court’ press service claimed that the unnamed person had organized a network of correspondents in 2023 who had passed him information, including about the places of deployment of Russian military units which subsequently came under a missile strike from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Russia’s FSB and Investigative Committee are always torn between the wish to stage such ‘spying trials’ and the fear of showing Ukrainians opposing the Russian invaders and defending their own country. Mercantile motives are, therefore, suggested, although the 20 thousand roubles a month which Levchenko allegedly received would probably not have been able to even cover costs
It was also asserted, most implausibly, that in the Telegram channel that Levchenko administered, he had, “in order to put psychological pressure on residents of the region, posted publications calling for the killing of Russian soldiers”; members of the so-called ‘election commissions’ [formed for the fake elections illegally carried out in occupied parts of Ukraine] and representatives of the occupation ‘authorities’.
Levchenko was accused and duly ‘convicted’ of ‘state treason’ under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code; and Article 280 § 2 (public calls to carry out extremist activities, committed with the use of the Internet). He was sentenced to 16 years’ maximum-security imprisonment with a subsequent one year of restricted liberty. He was also prohibited from carrying out any activities linked with administering a website for a year.
While not concealing the link with Telegram channels, the Russian and occupation sources avoid mentioning that Heorhiy Levchenko (b. 1989) is a journalist, although the horrific sentence is directly connected with him.
This is the second sentence, with the others, unfortunately, unlikely to be much better. Thankfully, 28-year-old Mark Kaliush was released in a prisoner exchange on Ukraine’s Independence Day and is safely back in Ukraine after the Southern District Military Court in Rostov ordered mandatory ‘psychiatric treatment’. It is not clear why Levchenko’s ‘trial’ was before an occupation ‘court’, while the others are all expected to be held at the notorious Southern District Military Court. It may, unfortunately, mean that the other cases include ‘terrorism’ charges, given the ‘confessions’ forced out of Mark Kaliush, who is extremely vulnerable, and Yana Suvorova, who was just 18 when seized.
As reported, the Russians managed to hack into and hijack the Telegram channel RIA-Melitopol back on 20 August 2023, and it was then that journalists Heorhiy Levchenko and Anastasia Hlukovska, as well, almost certainly, as Yana Suvorova; Mark Kaliush; Oleksandr Malyshev and Maksym Rupchov were abducted. Kostiantyn Zinovkin was also shown on the Russian propaganda video two months later, on 29 October 2023, although he had been abducted in May 2023, and is now on ‘trial’ on quite different charges.
The real RIA-Melitopol, now found here, reported on 30 October that Russia had come up with “an entire blockbuster in the style of Russian propaganda” over two months after seizing their Telegram channel and abducting its administrators. A Vesti.ru propagandist supposedly accompanied FSB ‘seizure squads’ in their early morning ‘operation’ against the above-mentioned Telegram channel administrators. All of this, including the armed FSB officers in balaclavas and full military gear, was clearly staged, since Zinvovkin had been abducted back in May and the Telegram administrators on 20 August 2023, not, as the Vesti.ru ‘correspondent’ claimed, in the early hours of 27 October 2023.
It was claimed that “RIA Melitopol was used “as well as its propaganda functions, for the gathering of information about the places of deployment and routes of Russian army units, and to recruit people to carry out acts of terrorism”.
The program was very clearly aimed at threatening horrific consequences to all those patriotic Ukrainians in Melitopol that they too could face such armed raids, whose men shoot to kill if they encounter any resistance. Although the charges included ‘terrorism’, no attempt was made to conceal the fact that the young Ukrainians had been arrested as administrators of Telegram channels and ‘information providers.” The ‘terrorism’ charges, moreover, were based solely on the videoed ‘confessions’ of young people who had been held incommunicado, without access to independent lawyers and almost certainly tortured and threatened for over two months.
