A Russian occupation ‘court’ has sentenced Yulia Mosiak from Novoaidar (Luhansk oblast) to 16 years’ imprisonment on grotesque charges. The aggressor state, which seized Mosiak’s town in the first days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, claimed that the Ukrainian had ‘committed treason against Russia’ by providing shelter to two Ukrainian soldiers.
As is increasingly often the case, the only information available about this alleged ‘trial’ has come from Russian occupation sources and cannot be verified. Although Mosiak is only identified as ‘M’ and her age in the report of the sentence on 2 December 2025, the details correspond to reports in occupation and Russian propaganda media on 24 April 2025.
The charge of ‘treason’ under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code suggests that Mosiak had taken Russian citizenship. Russia has, however, made it next to impossible to live on occupied territory without taking its citizenship. If Mosiak did indeed provide shelter to two Ukrainian defenders, then it would have made sense to take the passport, especially if, as seems likely, she was working in a hospital.
The Ukrainian is claimed to have, from March 2022 until December 2023 provided a hiding place for the two Ukrainian soldiers, who may well have ended up trapped in Novoaidar after the Russian invaders seized the town on 3 March that year. The 2 December report from the so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic high court’ would be comical were Mosiak’s situation not so tragic. There is nothing to indicate whether there was even one hearing before sentence was passed. Nor should the claim that Mosiak “admitted guilt and repented” be taken too seriously. She would appear to have been imprisoned for two years, probably incommunicado and very likely without any charge being formally laid until late April 2025.
Mosiak, described as an opponent of Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ [i.e. its war of aggression against Ukraine], is supposed to have communicated on a messenger app with an unidentified representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence. As a result of this, “the criminal intention arose to carry out state treason by providing help in moving to Ukrainian territory to two Ukrainian soldiers hiding in her apartment.” The legal absurdity of this assertion is quite staggering. An invading state is claiming that a Ukrainian citizen, who almost certainly did not then have Russian citizenship, “decided to commit treason” (under Russian legislation!) by protecting the Ukrainian defenders of her own country. The Russians began abducting even civilians who had once served in Ukraine’s Armed Forces, with most savagely tortured and, in many cases, sentenced on preposterous charges. There was every reason to assume that the two Ukrainian soldiers would receive similar, if not worse, treatment.
It is claimed that Mosiak went to the district hospital where she supposedly photographed blanks of medical documents and discharge forms and sent these to the still unidentified man from Military Intelligence, so that fictitious documents could be prepared for the two soldiers.
During a supposed attempt by the soldiers to get across Russian checkpoints with documents saying that they were ill, the men were caught, and very likely tortured into providing details “about the circumstances around their movements.”
A panel of three anonymous ‘judges’ from an entirely illegal occupation ‘court’ found Yulia Mosiak guilty of ‘treason’ and sentenced her to 16 years in a medium-security prison colony [the harshest in the case of women).
