Nothing has been heard from Kateryna Kuzmenko since March 2024. There is every reason for concern since the 35-year-old Ukrainian political prisoner (b. 26.10.1990) needs constant assistance and should be receiving treatment to slow down the debilitating effects of multiple sclerosis [MS]. She is instead imprisoned in Russia, having been abducted by the aggressor state for serving, almost ten years earlier, as a medical worker in the Aidar Battalion. This has, since 2015, been part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, and Russia’s use of subservient ‘judges’ to label it ‘a terrorist organization’ only highlights the cynical and profoundly lawless nature of its persecution of Ukrainians like Kateryna Kuzmenko.
The Ukrainian publication Graty has spoken with Pavlo, a volunteer, now living in the UK, who has been in contact with Kuzmenko since veteran organizations began collecting money to pay for her MS treatment. She told him that she and her family were from the Luhansk oblast but were forced to move to government-controlled Ukraine after the events of 2014 and the creation of the Russian proxy ‘Luhansk people’s republic’. For a while, Kateryna was active as a volunteer, but then joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a medic in August 2015. She left in February 2017 because of her MS diagnosis and initially settled in Vinnytsia. Her worsening state of health, however, forced her to move to Novoaidar in Luhansk oblast, where her mother, stepfather (who is also a veteran) and younger brother were living. At some point, she had married and explained during her ‘trial’ that she needed constant treatment and care which her husband and mother provided. She stated clearly that she could not survive in prison conditions.
MS is a brutal autoimmune disease and one that, at present, has no cure. There is, however, treatment which can slow down the development of the worst symptoms; and it is this that Russia has deprived her of because of its vengeful reprisals against all of those who seek to defend and / or serve Ukraine. Pavlo told Graty that she is “a fighter” and says that during periods when she was feeling better, she would even think about looking for work. There were, however, other times when she would lose consciousness, and her limbs would go numb, meaning that she needed 24-hour assistance.
Novoaidar fell to the invaders on 2 March 2022, soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is worth stressing that both Kateryna (who then had the surname Korzhyk) and her stepfather were obvious targets for the Russian invaders as Ukrainian veterans, with the Russian military abducting and torturing veterans in any Ukrainian populated area which came under their control. It is telling that, in November 2022, Denys Muryha, one of the first veterans against whom Russia staged a show trial in November 2022 over alleged involvement in Aidar was charged with ‘involvement in an unlawful armed formation” (Article 208 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code), not, as has since become standard, with ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ (Article 205.4).
It was clear in August 2022 that the Russian supreme court’s ruling, declaring the Ukrainian Armed Forces Azov Regiment ‘a terrorist organization’ was primarily aimed at bringing ‘terrorism’ charges against former defenders of Mariupol. Russia has used the same ruse against prisoners of war and former veterans of the Aidar Battalion and some other units of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, with the relevant rulings passed by the notorious Southern District Military Court on 23 September 2023.
On 22 May 2022, A.C. Denysenko, an ‘investigator’ from the Russian occupation ‘Luhansk people’s republic ministry of state security’ issued an order prohibiting Kateryna Korzhyk (Kuzmenko) from leaving occupied territory, with this order remaining in force until the 5-year sentence was passed.
The charge was absolutely surreal, with Kateryna’s service in the Ukrainian Armed Forces Aidar Battalion from August 2015 to February 2017 as a medical orderly branded ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ (under Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code).
The ‘trial’ took place at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov, with Kateryna Korzhyk (Kuzmenko) sentenced on 6 October 2023 to five years in a prison settlement (the lightest of Russian penal institutions). The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project, which has declared Kateryna a political prisoner, assumes that she was taken into custody on 24 January 2024.
With particular absurdity, the ruling claimed that Kateryna had been aware of the ‘terrorist’ nature of the Aidar Battalion’s activities – some seven years before different ‘judges’ from the same court in Rostov declared the military unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces ‘a terrorist organization’.
Although there were scandals and controversy around the original Aidar Volunteer Battalion, which arose, like other volunteer formations, at a time when Ukraine faced unprecedented military aggression, it was never an illegal, still less a ‘terrorist’ organization. It has, moreover, been part of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since early 2015, and all Ukrainians taken prisoner for serving in Aidar must, like any other prisoners of war, be treated in accordance with international law. No reference to unwarranted and politically motivated court rulings, or to unsubstantiated claims about Aidar, dating back to 2014, can justify any of these judicial travesties.
The sentence on 6 October 2023 was passed by a panel of ‘judges’ from the Southern District Military Court, with Kirill Nikolaevich Krivtsov presiding. This same individual has been responsible for sentencing many Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners to long terms of imprisonment. The sentence was upheld at appeal level by ‘judge’ Marina Ushakova.
The sentence was supposed to begin on 29 March 2024 at the Seleznivka women’s prison colony in occupied Luhansk oblast, however nothing has been heard from her and there seems to be doubt as to whether this prison is still functioning.
The conditions in any Russian or Russian-controlled penal institution are horrific even for men and women in good health. Subjecting a woman with MS to such treatment is tantamount to torture.
See also:
Russia passes massive sentences against 15 Ukrainian POWs for defending Ukraine against its invasion
