On 21 November 2025, the Second Western District Military Court in Moscow passed a massive 19-year sentence against 42-year-old Yulia Lemeshchenko on ‘treason’; ‘terrorism’ and ‘sabotage’ charges. Lemeshchenko was accused of blowing up an electricity pylon providing power to a factor producing military drones, and of involvement in plans to kill a Russian colonel, sentenced in Ukraine on war crimes charges for his role in bombing civilian targets in Kharkiv.
Yulia Lemeshchenko (b. 28.08.1983) is a Russian citizen, but moved to Kharkiv in Ukraine in 2014, together with her then husband, and their small son, who is now 14. She clearly had relatives in Ukraine, including one killed as a result of Russia’s war of aggression. She began powerlifting in Ukraine and became Ukraine’s national champion in 2021. She had, from the outset, tried to receive Ukrainian citizenship, with the Powerlifting Federation adding their support to this. Ukraine’s Migration Service remains unreformed to this day, and her efforts proved fruitless. This is worst than frustrating now, as it is likely to make it much harder, or impossible, to secure Lemeshchenko’s release in a prisoner exchange, despite the fact that she was clearly acting in support of Ukraine.
Later details are based on ‘testimony’ obtained by the investigators earlier and read out in court. Given the Russian FSB’s frequent use of torture and other illegal methods to obtain such ‘testimony’, caution would normally be warranted. Here, however, although Lemeshchenko’s has said that the FSB threatened to kill her, she does not appear to have denied her involvement in the following, reported from the court hearing by Mediazona.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when Kharkiv was subjected to near daily airstrikes, Lemeshchenko left for Germany. She returned in 2023, and decided to join the Free Russia Legion, which is fighting on Ukraine’s side, but had only got through interview stage. In the Spring of 2024, she moved to Kyiv and underwent training in using various firearms, in operating drones and preparing explosives. She asserted that her instructors had avoided telling her where they were serving, but had said that she would, in compensation, receive Ukrainian citizenship.
In August 2024, she set off, via Odesa, Moldova and Georgia (where she left her then 13-year-old son) to Voronezh, where she had once lived. There, she contacted the Free Russia Legion and received money from them to buy components to prepare a 10-kilogram bomb, which she used in October 2024 to blow up an electricity pylon near St Petersburg. While not denying her involvement in this, Lemeshchenko stated in court that she had been targeting a factory producing military drones.
Then in November, she had been contacted and asked to find Aleksei Loboda, a a Russian colonel and commander of a military airbase, who has been sentenced by a Ukrainian court in absentia to 12 years for war crimes over his part in bombing civilian targets in Kharkiv. Later, in January 2025, while maintaining surveillance of Loboda, Lemeshchenko was accused of having constructed two bombs from everyday ingredients. In court, she explained that she had understood this was for “some kind of sabotage”, but that others were supposed to pick up the explosive device. She was detailed soon afterwards, having been watched since at least December.
In response to judge Vadim Krasnov’s question as to why she had taken part in surveillance of Loboda, Lemeshchenko said that she had wanted to help fight those who were bombing her city, that she had been defending her home. Krasnov deliberately misunderstood, mentioning the city where she had been born in Russia. Lemeshchenko answered that her home was Kharkiv.
Lemeshchenko rejected evident attempts to suggest that she had been willing to kill civilians. Krasnov, for example, asked if she had been told to blow up the stairwell unit of the apartment block where Loboda lives. “f course not”, she replied, saying she would obviously not have done that.
She said that she had agreed, before undertaking her role, that her actions would not kill innocent civilians. It is worth stressing that individuals like Loboda, regardless of the amount of evidence against them and even arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court, would not be either extradited or tried in Russia. Quite the contrary, with Russian leader Vladimir Putin having lavished military ‘honours’ on individuals suspected of very grave war crimes.
In court, Lemeshchenko did not deny the charges, but stated that from a moral point of view, she did not consider herself guilty. The charges against her could not have been worse, and seem clearly disproportionate to the impugned actions, with this likely one of the reasons why the renowned Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project has included her in their list of other victims of political repression. She was charged, among other articles of Russia’s criminal code, with ‘treason’ (Article 27); with ‘a terrorist attack’ (Article 205); with ‘training in terrorist activities’ (Article 205.3(; ‘sabotage’ (Article 281) and ‘involvement’ in a terrorist organization’ (Article 205.5 § 2). She was found ‘guilty’ of all those charges on 21 November 2025 and sentenced to 19 years in a medium-security prison colony (officially, Russia does not have maximum-security penal institutions for women). She was also ordered to pay a million-rouble fine, as well as 2.2 million roubles from a civil suit brought by the Lenergo company.
In her final address, Yulia Lemeshchenko very movingly explained her stand.
“I am not a citizen of the country for whom I decided to fight, yet nonetheless I consider Ukraine my home. I love that country and endlessly love Kharkiv.”
Yulia spoke of the relative and the friends whom she had lost in this war, and of the massive damage which Russia inflicted on Northern Saltivka, a suburb of Kharkiv.
“There were around half a million residents, include several people I knew, my hairdresser. After the Russian bombings and shelling, not one apartment block has remained whole in this district. Not a single one. Nor am I talking simply about windows knocked out, but of whole parts [of the apartment blocks] being destroyed. There were explosions right next to my apartment block. My neighbour Anya, wit her 4-year-old son Nikita, lived on the ground floor with the explosion just outside their windows. The apartment was totally destroyed. I don’t know what happened to Anya and her son, Nikita, whether they survived or not”..
“I could not stand on the sideline…. I decided to fight against this, against Russia’s military aggression. Perhaps my words are worsening my position, but, your honour, my conscience is more important for me.”
