It was almost exactly two years after Mykola Dzhosh was abducted by the Russian occupiers of his Zaporizhzhia oblast village that an occupation ‘court’ sentenced him to life imprisonment. He was accused of ‘spying’ and ‘sabotage’, charges that his uncle Serhiy dismisses as baseless. What Russia, as the aggressor state, calls ‘spying and sabotage’ generally constitutes actions in defence of ones own country, and this case is no exception. There is, however, every reason to be sceptical about the charges, given that the defendant’ has been abducted, almost certainly tortured and held incommunicado for two years. It is equally suspicious that the indictment is almost verbatim taken from countless other such staged ‘trials’, with the only difference being a highly successful missile strike by Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Mykola Dzhosh (b. 1991) is from Ocheretuvate, a village in the Tokmak district of Zaporizhzhia oblast. In September 2023, Serhiy learned from his nephew’s neighbours that armed men had turned up at Mykola’s home and taken him away in handcuffs.
As is generally the case, Mykola simply disappeared with all his uncle’s attempts to find out at least where he had been taken proving fruitless. Serhiy later left occupied territory and, safely in government-controlled Ukraine, began approaching all Ukrainian bodies, as well as the Red Cross. Although he was told that those he approached were doing with it, nothing came of that either.
Serhiy spoke with Suspilne Zaporizhzhia after the ‘sentence’ passed on 1 September 2025, and it is possible that all or most of the information he talks about as coming from neighbours only emerged after the verdict and sentence. It is known that he was first held prisoner at a SIZO [remand prison] in occupied Mariupol, then in occupied Simferopol. It is unclear whether there was a ‘trial’ of any kind, or merely a day in the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’, in which the indictment and sentence were read out.
It was this illegitimate and anonymous ‘court’ which, on 3 September 2025, reported the monstrous life sentence in a ‘special regime’ prison camp (even harsher than the conditions of a maximum-security prison colony). The first five years of the sentence are to be in a prison, with the harshest conditions of all Russian penal institutions.. He was accused of ‘spying’ (under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code); involvement in a sabotage group, under Article 281.3 § 2, and of sabotage under Article 281.3 § 3b.
It is claimed that, in May 2023, Dzhosh (named only by initial), got in touch via Messenger with an old friend who is in government-controlled Ukraine and serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. It was, purportedly, on this person’s suggestion, that Dzhosh agreed to join a sabotage group and to agree to gather and pass on information about the places of deployment of Russian armed forces’ personnel; ‘defence’ and military structures, as well as armed vehicles, for the information to be used by Ukraine’s Armed Forces to carry out missile strikes.
Dzhosh is alleged to have passed on information locating an anti-aircraft system covering occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast and military personnel. It was after this, the report claims, that Ukraine’s Armed Forces used a HIMARS missile to hit the target, destroying the anti-aircraft system and killing three Russian soldiers.
All credit to Dzhosh if he did help Ukraine’s Armed Forces defend Ukrainian territory against an invading power. In fact, however, there is no guarantee that he was not simply an easy target, one of many civilians whom the Russians typically seize after any such Ukrainian attack.
