A Crimean occupation ‘court’ has sentenced Kateryna Fomenko to five and a half years’ imprisonment in the first case involving so-called ‘military fakes’ in the occupied peninsula. While it is not known exactly what the 38-year-old Ukrainian from occupied Sevastopol wrote in the post on Telegram in June 2024, she was sentenced under the most draconian of four new charges rushed into law ten days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. These have, up till now, been used to imprison people for writing the truth about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Mariupol and other Ukrainian cities, and there are no grounds for assuming that the situation is any different here.
Fomenko was charged under Article 207.3 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code. The article claims to prosecute for “the public circulation of knowingly false information about the use of the RF armed forces for the purpose of defending the interests of the RF and its citizens, upholding international peace and security [sic]”. Here, as in many other cases, the sentences are so harsh because paragraph two is applied, namely the claim that the person acted “out of motives of political or national hatred or enmity, as well as of hatred or enmity towards a social group”. The same charge was applied against Alexei Gorinov; Dmitry Talantov; Olga Smirnova and 68-year-old Ukrainian-born paediatrician Natalia Buyanova, for entirely truthful statements (or, in Buyanova’s case, alleged comments) regarding Russia’s crime of aggression and / or specific war crimes in Ukraine. These are labelled ‘fake’ because they contradict the position of Russia’s defence ministry. The latter has systematically denied all bombing of civilian targets, summary executions and other war crimes, with these denials used as ‘proof’ of what is true, regardless of how much evidence has received verification, including by the International Criminal Court.
The occupation Crimean prosecutor reported on 12 November 2025 that the sentence had been passed by the ‘Leninsky district court’ in Sevastopol. It is, in fact, for five years, six months and fifteen days in a medium-security prison colony. Fomenko (who is not named in the ‘prosecutor’s’ report) was also prohibited from taking part in any activities involving the public posting of appeals or other material on the Internet for two years. There is no suggestion that Fomenko pleaded guilty, so it seems likely she will lodge an appeal.
It is claimed that on Telegram in June 2024, Fomenko twice “circulated, under the guise of true reports, knowingly false information, containing data about the use of the RF armed forces which led to the discrediting and undermining of the authority of the RF armed forces.”
The authoritative Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project declared Kateryna Fomenko a political prisoner back on 4 September 2025. It stated that her imprisonment on ‘military fake’ charges under Article 207.3 violated her right to freely express her opinion, and her right to a fair trial.
Memorial wrote that Fomenko was born in Sevastopol, but lived for a long time in Kyiv. She returned to Crimea in 2017 for family reasons and remained, taking Russian citizenship. This, it should be remembered, is because Russia has illegally made it impossible to live and work on occupied territory without a Russian passport.
Fomenko’s persecution had begun in 2025, with three separate administrative prosecutions and ‘convictions’ over comments in social media critical of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
On 26 May 2025, she was fined 45 thousand roubles on another of the charges rushed in on 3 March 2022, namely Article 20.3.3 of Russia’s code of administrative offences (‘discrediting the Russian armed forces’). This was in connection with three comments under social media posts, with one of them reading: “If the Russians [rashisty] had reached Kyiv in 2022, there would have been mass disappearances, killings, filtration like on occupied territory now. They would have taken what they wanted, would have stuffed their pockets, they never needed negotiations”. In another, she repeats that any negotiations will be purely about gaining time.
Fomenko was, essentially, describing the actions of the invaders in Bucha, with it those actions which discredited Russia and its army. This was no impediment to ‘judge’ Victor Nikolaevich Klimakov from the occupation ‘Leininsky district court’ who found Fomenko guilty and imposed a fairly large 45 thousand rouble fine.
On 26 June, two weeks before being detained on criminal charges, she was convicted under two counts of administrative prosecution. The same ‘court’ under ‘judge’ Andrei Petrovich Grachev twice fined her 12 thousand roubles under Article 20.3.1 – ‘inciting hatred or enmity’. Both convictions were over comments pertaining to Russia’s war against Ukraine and sanctions against Russia.
Memorial assumes that it was because of Fomenko’s active expression of critical views on social media that Russia’s FSB targeted her. This was, effectively, confirmed in the report on her arrest on 7 July 2025. This spoke of her having, over a long period, made critical comments which supposedly “contained untrue information about the actions of Russian soldiers during the special military operation, discredited the government and president of the Russian Federation; incited hatred on national and racial grounds”, etc.
None of the comments cited in respect to the administrative prosecutions contained untrue information.
