The secret ‘trial’ has begun in occupied Sevastopol of Ruslan Chorny-Shvets, a former Ukrainian military serviceman from Poltava oblast, abducted over two years ago, together with his colleague from military studies, Serhiy Lykhomanov. The latter was recently sentenced to 15 years after Russia staged two ‘trials’ behind closed doors, and it is, unfortunately, likely that the supposed ‘hearing’ scheduled for 30 January 2026 is a formality, with a ‘guilty’ verdict against Chorny-Shvets and long sentence largely predetermined. There has been a dramatic surge in the number of Russian prosecutions on ‘treason’ or ‘spying’ charges since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and a former military career has long been enough to mark a person out as an easy target.
Russia’s FSB first staged a Crimean show trial, after targeting three friends and former Ukrainian naval colleagues Dmytro Shtyblikov; Oleksiy Bessarabov and Volodymyr Dudka, back in 2016. Then, however, there was still a chance of learning about the specific charges and about the course of the ‘trials’. Since 2022, it has become disturbingly difficult to find out anything, with men and women typically disappearing, only to re-emerge when the occupation prosecutor or ‘courts’ announce huge sentences. It was only in November 2025 that Eskender Bariev, Head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, reported that two Ukrainians had been seized in occupied Sevastopol on 27 December 2023. Bariev explained that Serhiy Lykhomanov and Ruslan Chorny-Shvets were both from Poltava oblast and knew each other well from their time in Ukraine’s military. Both had been sent to Crimea and had chosen to remain there after leaving the service.
Ruslan Chorny-Shvets (b. 19.04.1974 in Lubny, Poltava oblast) had had a lifelong interest in radio engineering and studied in this field at the Poltava Higher Military College of Communications. It was likely there that he met Lykhomanov who is the same age and also graduated in radio engineering. Chorny-Shvets was sent to serve in Sevastopol, where he married and began raising three children, with the need to provide for them prompting him to leave the military earlier than Lykhomanov, some time in the 1990s. Lykhomanov also served in a radio engineering battalion in Ai-Petri, then in Feodosia and finally in Sevastopol, where he left military service in 2007.
Armed Russian FSB officers burst into both men’s homes on 27 December 2023, carrying out searches and then taking the men away. Lykhomanov’s sister has since said that his family knew nothing of his whereabouts for two months, and it is likely that the same was true of Chorny-Shvets. It is now known that Chorny-Shvets was held in a SIZO [remand prison] in Sevastopol, while Lykhomanov was taken to SIZO No. 8 in Simferopol, where he was held in solitary confinement. In one of the few messages Lykhomanov was able to pass on, he made it clear that any ‘confessions’ had been extracted through threats against his family. It is, unfortunately, also very likely that both men were subjected to physical torture. In Chorny-Shvets’ case, his very imprisonment is akin to medical torture as he suffers from sugar diabetes and needs two doses of insulin each day. His state of health has deteriorated sharply over the two years of captivity; and it is likely thanks to his family who, with difficulty, get the vital medication to him, that he is still alive. His 70-year-old mother is in mainland Ukraine, and neither she, nor his brother and sister have had any contact with him since December 2023 and are, clearly very worried. Bariev notes that Russia’s own regulations do have severe forms of diabetes on the list of conditions which should preclude detention. Unfortunately, it has long been clear, and was recently seen in two shocking cases, that Russia will flagrantly infringe even its own regulations where Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners are concerned.
It is, at present, unclear what, if any, specific accusations have been levelled at Chorny-Shvets to warrant the ‘treason’ charge (under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code) and whether he has an independent lawyer.
As reported, after holding Serhiy Lykhomanov incommunicado for almost 18 months, Russia staged the first of two ‘trials’ on different charges, although over the same alleged actions. He had, throughout, been held incommunicado, and had no access to an independent lawyer.
He was accused of planning a terrorist attack’ and of ‘state treason’, with the latter supposedly because of help to Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] in the form of information about the location of military sites in Sevastopol.
The FSB claimed to have found a homemade explosive device prepared for use in causing an explosion on the railways during the ‘search’ carried out of Lykhomanov’s apartment. The suggestion that Lykhomanov could have been storing such an explosive device in the apartment has been roundly dismissed by his sister and is difficult to take seriously given the obvious danger with a small child around.
Lykhomanov was sentenced in May 2024 to five years and a 50-thousand rouble fine, with the charge then only of transporting and keeping explosives. He was claimed to have held industrial level and/or foreign explosive material in the family’s one-room apartment. The ‘judge’ - Pavel Kryllo is from Omsk in the Russian Federation and was transferred to the occupation ‘Gagarin district court’ in Sevastopol in 2016. He has previously taken part in other politically motivated ‘trials’, against Ukrainians Ihor Movenko and Volodymyr Prysich.
Lykhomanov had been held without any contact with his family or a proper lawyer. The FSB typically use such periods, where a person may not even have been formally detained, to torture or otherwise force out ‘confessions’. During this first ‘trial’, Lykhomanov did not deny the charges and rejected the services of an independent lawyer, with the ‘trial’ over in one day. All of this should, however, be treated with caution as he also managed to pass on a brief message that he had, after his ‘arrest’, been placed under huge psychological pressure, with his captors threatening to hurt his family. Although in essentially all other known cases, the FSB have also used electric shocks and other forms of physical torture, such threats against a person’s family are also often used. Serhiy’s sister, Tetiana, is convinced that it was the threats that made her brother behave as he did. “They knew how to pressure him. He has a small child and would sign anything so that they didn’t touch [the child]”.
A year later, in May 2025, two other charges – of ‘planning an act of terrorism which caused considerable damage to property, and other grave consequences’ (Article 205 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code) and of ‘state treason’ (Article 275) – were passed to Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court.
It was claimed that Lykhomanov had, in March 2022, via an Internet messenger been ‘recruited’ by an officer of Ukraine’s Security Service for ‘confidential collaboration’ and carried out various tasks in Sevastopol. He was supposed to have received instructions from the SBU officer to gather information about the places of deployment and about the military position of Russian anti-aircraft equipment.
It was further alleged that, from 1 to 21 November 2023, while in Sevastopol, Lykhomaov had found an unnamed ‘accomplice’, who opposed what Russia continues to call its ‘special military operation’ [i.e. its war of aggression against Ukraine]. On 21 and 25 November 2023 the other person had, purportedly, passed Lykhomanov the information he had gathered, with the latter claimed to have passed this on to the SBU officer “during the period from 25 to 31 [sic] November 2023”
Dates are also given for an alleged plan to blow up a railway bridge across the Belbek river on 9 October 2023. Lykhomanov’s alleged role is linked with taking a photograph and sending this to the supposed ‘SBU officer’ and taking an explosive device and other components from a hiding place.
Were there genuinely evidence to back these allegations, it is entirely unclear why a first relatively minor ‘trial’ was staged over a year earlier. It is equally unclear why the alleged ‘accomplice’, presumably Ruslan Chorny-Shvets, was not tried at the same time.
Judging by the information on the Southern District Military Court website, Lykhomanov’s second ‘trial’ was not much longer than the first. Although the ‘case’ was passed to the Southern District Military Court back on 22 May 2025, there were almost no hearings before ‘judge’ Denis Aleksandrovich Galkin passed sentence on 8 October 2025.
Lykhomanov was sentenced to 15 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the first five years in a prison, the harshest of Russian penal institutions. He was also fined another 50 thousand roubles.
