On 10 September, a cassation chamber of Russia’s Supreme Court found nothing wrong with the 10.5-year sentence, passed by an illegal occupation ‘court’. against Ukrainian IT specialist Iryna Horobtsova two years after she was abducted by the Russian invaders of her native Kherson. These ‘cassation hearings’ in cases involving Ukrainian political prisoners are always largely a formality, however the sentence against Horobtsova broke all records in lawlessness. Iryna Horobtsova was illegally charged under Russian legislation with ‘spying’ over a period of almost 11 months during which she was known to be held incommunicado in Russian captivity.
Horobtsova had been moved to a women’s prison colony in Mordovia after the original appeal against her sentence was rejected. She was brought to Moscow for the cassation hearing, with her father, Volodymyr Horobtsov informing Suspilne Crimea that his daughter will soon again undergo the gruelling journey to prison colony No. 2 in Yavas (Mordovia).
Most cassation hearings, as well as some appeals against sentences passed against abducted Ukrainian civilians and / or political prisoners, take place with the defendants forced to participate by video link. It is possible that Horobtsova was brought to Moscow for a hearing whose outcome was clear because her plight has elicited international concern. It was a cruel farce, however, especially given the particularly bad conditions during the journey from prison to prison which can take a month or more, and grounds for concern about Iryna’s health.
Iryna Horobtsova (b. 13 May 1985) is an IT specialist who was working as a software tester for a leading Ukrainian IT company when Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. She refused to leave Kherson and was very active as a volunteer, taking bandages, painkillers, etc. to the hospital to help the wounded and driving medics to work in Kherson and oblast. She also delivered food and medicines to those in Kherson most in need. She openly expressed her opposition to the Russian invasion and took part in the mass protests in the centre of Kherson which ended only after the Russians began shooting at protesters and mounting a terror campaign. She wrote about the protests on social media, with her posts clearly demonstrating her pro-Ukrainian position and support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
All of the above was enough to make Horobtsova an obvious target and on 13 May 2022, armed and masked Russians burst into her home, carried out a search and took her away. She was held incommunicado, however the Crimean Human Rights Group did learn, a few months after her disappearance, that Horobtsova was held at a SIZO [remand prison] in occupied Crimea. This was without any formal status and without criminal charges having been laid, although the Russians had admitted to the family that she was in their custody. Her parents approached Russia’s FSB [security service] several times. On each occasion, they were told that Iryna was not in danger but that she would be held in detention until the end of what the Russians euphemistically call ‘the special military operation’
Renowned human rights lawyer, Emil Kurbedinov was consistently prevented from even getting a letter to Horobtsova, let alone seeing her. The FSB also refused to provide any information about her, claiming that this was “to protect state secrets”.
In December 2022, Human Rights Watch drew attention to Russia’s enforced disappearance of Horobtsova, citing a woman who had contacted Iryna’s parents in November to say that she had been held prisoner with their daughter. Iryna had told her that she had been held in solitary confinement for over three months, and that she had been blindfolded by her captors and taken to occupied Crimea “where she was interrogated twice about her pro-Ukraine position. Horobtsova also told her that her interrogators had placed an AK-rifle on the table in front of her and hung a clothing iron on the wall in the interrogation room, threatening to use it on her if she did not “tell [them] everything.”
It is baffling, given the amount of evidence that Horobtsova was seized in May 2022, that Russia should have come up with such an extraordinary indictment for its ‘spying trial’. It was claimed that Horobtsova had, from February 2022 through March 2023 gathered information about the places of deployment, times, routes and movement of Russia’s army and Rosgvardia forces around Kherson oblast and passed these to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence.
Since, even had Horobtsova been privy to information about Russian military movements in Russian captivity, she would hardly have been given a direct line to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence, Russia is clearly claiming that Horobtsova was abducted in April 2023 – 11 months into her actual captivity.
All such ‘trials’ are held behind closed doors, yet even so, this is a massive lie to be maintaining.
The ‘trial’ purportedly took place at the Russian occupation ‘Kherson regional court’ although the sentence, on 15 August 2024 was reported by the occupation ‘Crimean prosecutor’. Horobtsova was sentenced to ten and a half years’ imprisonment.
The appeal hearing took place in Moscow on 31 March 2025, with this physically impossible indictment and sentence upheld.
