The occupation ‘Sevastopol city court’ has sentenced Mykola Davydchenko to 17 years in a maximum-security prison colony. The 59-year-old from Feodosia was accused of ‘state treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, and of illegally procuring, possessing, and producing an explosive device’ (under Articles 222.1 §§ 1 and 3c, and 223.1 § 1). Since all such ‘trials’ on supposed treason or spying charges are invariably held behind closed doors, there is no way of independently verifying the claims made by the occupation prosecutor and repeated by Russian state-controlled media. The information reported is, however, very similar to countless fabricated cases based solely on Russian FSB claims to have thwarted ‘Crimean saboteurs’, invariably alleged to have been working for Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] or Military Intelligence.
It was claimed that in 2022, Dadydchenko had contacted a member of Ukraine’s Security Service via an Internet site and had, purportedly, “been initiated into confidential collaboration against the security of the Russian Federation.” Supposedly following instructions from Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU], he was alleged to have, in November 2023 and in April 2024, removed an electric detonator and a high explosive device, with a mass of 1.2 kilograms from hiding places prepared for him at a cemetery in the Dzhankoi area. “From these items, as well as nails and other elements, Davydchenko prepared a homemade explosive device in his garage in Feodosia and, in July 2024, on instructions from SBU, hid it near the Yalta-Sevastopol highway.” FSB officers had, purportedly, “thwarted Davydchenko’s criminal activities. He was detained and placed in custody, with the explosive device removed.”
No ‘accomplices’ are mentioned and the claim is clearly that the explosive device was left at the place it was supposed to go off. This is, indeed, asserted in the headlines in Russian state media. TASS, for example, reported that “a Crimean has been sentenced to 17 years for planning a terrorist attack”, and then, later, that the person had “planted a bomb on the Sevastopol to Yalta road”.
It is telling, therefore, that Davydchenko was, in fact, accused only of explosives charges, with no possibility of establishing what, if any, evidence there actually was for the latest of very many allegedly ‘thwarted acts of sabotage’.
It seems likely that Davydchenko has been in detention for over a year, however there is nothing to indicate when charges were officially laid. This is important as the FSB in occupied Crimea typically hold people incommunicado for long periods of time, without any formal status and with no access to independent legal advice. Such periods are very often used to extract ‘confessions’ to whatever charges they then decide to lay.
The sentence announced on 12 September is for 17 years in a maximum-security prison colony, followed by a year of restricted liberty. A fine of 600 thousand roubles was also imposed, and the report stated that Davydchenko’s car and mobile telephones, all of which he was claimed to have used for his “criminal activities” had been confiscated.
Russia began staging ‘Crimean saboteur trials’ from soon after its invasion and annexation of Crimea, with two Ukrainians from Sevastopol – retired naval captain Volodymyr Dudka and academic and journalist Oleksiy Bessarabov seized in 2016 and serving 14-year sentences on preposterous and evidently fabricated charges.
There has been a sharp increase in the number of Crimean political prisoners, including those accused of supposedly thwarted sabotage plans since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It has also become significantly harder to follow such cases, with next to no information available and virtually all supposed ‘trials’ held behind closed doors.
See also:
Volodymyr Dudka, Oleksiy Bessarabov and Dmytro Shtyblikov
Iryna Danilovych
Serhiy Bodnarashyk
Daily ‘treason trials’ expose Russia’s lies about mass support in occupied Crimea
Lera Dzhemilova
Ismail Shemshedinov
Victoria Strilets and her daughter Oleksandr Strilets; Oleksandr Osadchy
Ihor Kopyl Russia sentences Crimean to 14 years on indictment copy-pasted from countless FSB political trials
Many others
