The so-called “Supreme Court of the LPR” sentenced Kreminna resident Denis Zelchan to 14 years in prison in a maximum-security colony. The man worked in the ambulance for over 30 years. Little is known about the case. The “court” Telegram channel says that “convicted Z., as a result of viewing foreign resources on the Internet with negative information about the activities of state authorities and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formed a firm position of rejection of the goals and objectives of the special military operation.” In December 2022, he allegedly contacted someone in unoccupied Ukraine and began to transfer to him data of the Russian military collected while working in an ambulance. It is reported that the man pleaded guilty to collecting “information of a military nature.”
In August of this year, the “prosecutor’s office” of the occupied region published a video of the medic’s detention and his “confession”: a man is stopped in the middle of the street by FSB representatives and thrown into a car. Judging by the weather, this is not happening in August at all, but instead in autumn or even winter.
— I am an ambulance worker, I have been working at the ambulance substation in the city of Kreminna for 31 years, — says Denys Zelchan on camera. — I passed on information about the presence of Russian Federation service members on the territory of Ukraine…
In the video, he admits that he communicated with his fellow entrepreneur, who once helped the Armed Forces of Ukraine with building materials, and later left Kreminna. In the official language of Russian investigators, he says that as a result of the shelling, which was carried out based on information provided to Ukraine, “several civilian residential buildings were damaged” on the street where he himself lives.
Let us recall that in early October, the so-called “Supreme Court of the DPR” sentenced another doctor, neonatologist Serhiy Petryk. He was also accused of allegedly “taking the initiative” to communicate with representatives of the Ukrainian Security Service and passing on information about the whereabouts of Russian servicemen via messenger. Petryk was sentenced to 15 years in prison and a fine. He did not admit his guilt.
Teenagers in captivity
Meanwhile, it became known that two schoolchildren were arrested in occupied Donetsk for allegedly preparing sabotage on the railway. It is unknown when the teenagers were actually detained. The occupation media reported on November 8 only that the “Voroshilov Interdistrict Court of Donetsk” had chosen a preventive measure in the form of detention for the children. The schoolchildren are 15 and 16 years old.
It is reported that they allegedly “agreed to commit a terrorist act” for a monetary reward: to set fire to a relay cabinet on the railway. Still, they note, “law enforcement officers prevented this in time.”
We have talked a lot about the persecution of children and teenagers in the Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian Federation. At the end of October, the occupation “prosecutor’s office” of Crimea approved an indictment in a criminal case against a 17-year-old teenager accused of participating in a “terrorist organization” banned in the territory of the Russian Federation. Two years ago, in Melitopol, the Russians kidnapped five children who were accused of creating the sabotage group “Black Sabotage”. Two of them — Danylo Dakhov and Pavlo Hrymak — died in captivity. Viktor Azarovsky, Oleg Shokol, and Denis Vasylyk are awaiting a court verdict in the Taganrog pre-trial detention center. In addition, in the summer of 2023, Tigran Hovhannisyan and Mykyta Khanganov were killed by the occupiers in Berdyansk. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian law enforcement officers have recorded at least 12 cases of detention of minor Ukrainians during the occupation of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions. The children were accused of helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine to adjust the fire, espionage, and treason. This information is incomplete as long as the Ukrainian territories are under occupation.
Energodar
The terror against civilians continues in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region. At the end of October, it became known that a Russian court had increased the term of imprisonment of the captured engineer of the Zaporizhzhia NPP, Serhiy Poting. We will remind you that he was kidnapped on June 23, 2023. Before that, his wife was taken away and tortured three times. In March of this year, Serhiy was sentenced to 19 years in a maximum-security colony for “illegal possession of weapons and an attempt to blow up the car of a representative of the Russian security forces”. But even this was not enough for the occupation regime. At the prosecutor’s office’s request, the approved sentence was increased to 20 years.
“Such inhuman decisions of the occupiers, based on fake accusations that have nothing to do with justice, were and remain evidence of their grave crimes in the temporarily occupied territories,” said the mayor of Energodar, Dmytro Orlov.
Two weeks ago, and even earlier, the so-called “Zaporizhzhia Regional Court” sentenced Ruslan Lavryk, a radio and television engineer at the Zaporizhzhia NPP. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison for allegedly transferring funds to the Ukrainian army, as well as passing information about the location of occupation troops to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He was detained in June 2024 for violating the curfew. According to Dmitry Orlov, after being tortured in captivity, the man has a heart problem and needs treatment.
Read more about the persecution of the Zaporizhzhia NPP employees and residents of the city of Energodar by the occupiers in this article. We also discussed the forced disappearance of the Zaporizhzhia NPP engineer, Serhiy Korzh. Last October, the so-called “Zaporizhzhia Regional Court” in occupied Melitopol sentenced him to 13 years in prison — for allegedly “collecting and passing on to an employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine information about the locations of equipment and personnel of units of the Federal Service of the National Guard of the Russian Federation in the Zaporizhzhia region.”
The scale of repression
According to the “Memorial” calculations, during October of this year, the Southern District Court in Rostov-on-Don received more than three dozen cases against Ukrainian citizens accused of “terrorist crimes.” “This is a new record for the number of cases in a month,” say human rights activists. “October also became a record for the number of sentences against Ukrainians — 29, and on October 7, the Southern District Military Court announced 5 sentences at once.”
Most of the defendants in the cases that came to court last month are servicemen of Azov, Aidar, and the Noman Chelebidzhikhan Battalion, but there are also many civilians among them. For example, 19-year-old Vitaliy Trofimchuk and Tatyana Devyatkina from Zaporizhzhia Oblast are accused of “justifying terrorism on the Internet,” Natalia Pushkash from Kherson Oblast, and Yuriy Nikitenko from Luhansk Oblast. Pavlo Hortenko from Zaporizhzhia Oblast and Yevhen Chukhn will be tried for preparing an “act of international terrorism.” Volodymyr Porolo, a 65-year-old resident of Luhansk Oblast, is accused of “financing terrorism.”
Human rights activists also drew attention to the case related to the “preparation of a terrorist attack in the Rostov-on-Don pre-trial detention center,” in which the defendants are previously convicted Hryhoriy Sinchenko, Dmytro Papenko, and Aidar battalion member Volodymyr Makarenko. The details of the case are unknown.
Legal dimension
Ukrainian civilians imprisoned in temporarily occupied territories must enjoy rights and guarantees in accordance with the IV Geneva Convention, Additional Protocol I, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In addition, Article 76 of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states: “Protected persons accused of committing a crime must be in the occupied territory, and if convicted, must serve their sentence there.” Instead, in violation of all international norms, the Russian authorities subject Ukrainians to torture, hold them in inhuman conditions, and deport them thousands of kilometers from their homes.
Relatives often remain unaware for months of the whereabouts of civilians abducted by the occupying power, even though, under international humanitarian law, the occupying power is obliged to report the whereabouts of all persons taken into custody, and the International Committee of the Red Cross must have unhindered access to all places of detention.
“The ongoing war against Ukraine has resulted in a series of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” said Mariana Katsarova, the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights violations in the Russian Federation, last year. “Of particular concern are Ukrainian civilians arbitrarily detained in the Russian Federation, as the Russian authorities do not provide information on their numbers, fate, and whereabouts, and many of them are victims of enforced disappearances. Most of them are held incommunicado, and, according to those released in the prisoner exchange, many are subjected to widespread and systematic torture, ill-treatment, including rape and other forms of sexual violence.”
The PEOPLE FIRST! Coalition of Human Rights Organizations demands the release of all prisoners jailed as a result of Russian aggression against Ukraine, including civilians convicted by Russian and Russian-controlled courts.
