Russia has staged another show trial on ‘treason’ charges, laid against a Ukrainian for having sent money to help the soldiers defending her country. 49-year-old Tetiana Omelchenko was seized at Sheremetyevo Airport, while trying to attend her brother’s funeral and has been imprisoned since 25 September 2024. Tetiana’s son is under 18, and has already lost his father, yet his mother’s plea for the sentence to be deferred her son turns 18 was ignored, and Omelchenko sentenced to 12 years.
Mediazona reported on 1 October 2025 that the Moscow Regional Court had sentenced Tetiana Omelchenko (b. 29 December 1975) to 12 years’ medium security imprisonment and had also imposed a steep fine of 400 thousand roubles. The charge of ‘treason’ was under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code. This is increasingly used against Ukrainians living under occupation and effectively forced into taking Russian citizenship. The situation with Omelchenko was slightly different. According to Mediazona, Omelchenko stated during the ‘court debate’ that she had been born in Yakutsk, but that her family had moved to Crimea when she was a child, then later to Kyiv where she had been living over recent years. She had taken Russian citizenship in 2021 and regularly visited relatives in Russia. She said that she had viewed the transfers to the Armed Forces as ‘charitable’, just as other charitable activities since 2020, following her husband’s terminal illness. She had come to Russia for her brother’s funeral, with this, presumably, on 25 September 2024, when she was detained after the border control at Sheremetyevo looked through her telephone and found the banking app used for the money transfers. There were 16 such bank transfers to Ukraine’s Armed Forces, under reference details such as “Medicine for Bakhmut” and “For rifles”, Solely on account of these donations, amounting in total to 6,600 UAH (over 15 thousand roubles), Russian prosecutor Victor Rodionov demanded a 14-year sentence and a 400 thousand rouble fine. The court obliged over the fine and cut a mere two years off the sentence. It seems that the Russian interior ministry are also demanding that Omelchenko be deprived of the Russian citizenship used as excuse for accusing her of ‘treason’.
This was one of the many cases where dubious administrative charges were used in succession to keep imprisoning Omelchenko until the FSB finally concocted their treason charge.
Even before the sentence, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project had added Tetiana Omelchenko to their list of people whose prosecutions are probably politically motivated.
Tetiana Omelchenko is one of a huge number of Ukrainians whom Russia has seized and ‘convicted of treason’. In a mounting number of cases, these charges have been laid solely because of donations to Ukraine’s defenders. Liudmyla Kolesnikova was also seized by the FSB in occupied Crimea after returning to see her dying mother. She was abducted shortly after her mother’s funeral, accused of ‘treason’ under Article 275 and sentenced to 17 years for a single donation back in 2022 (details here).
See also:
Russia stages terror arrests in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast for donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces
Serhiy Shtyrov
60-year-old from Russian-occupied Donbas sentenced to 13 years for donations to Ukraine’s defenders
Two women from Enerhodar sentenced to 14 years: Lilia Kazhkariova, one of an ever-mounting number of employees of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to have been abducted, and S.N. Dovhopola, who was put on ‘trial’ and sentenced to 14 years for donations to the military unit in which her son is serving. This was treated by the Russian invaders illegally occupying the women’s Ukrainian city as ‘treason’.
Kateryna Korovina Forced 'to wake up a foreign citizen in her own country’. Kateryna Korovina sentenced to 10 years for opposing Russia’s occupation
Ivan Semykoz Russia sentences Ukrainian to 8.5 years for donation as a teenager to Ukraine’s Azov Regiment
Stanislav Rudenko Chilling surveillance methods as Russia sentences Ukrainian to 10 years for donation to defend Ukraine
