Crimean seized at Moscow airport, faces up to 20-year sentence for donations to Ukraine

Kyrylo Kostyhov was detained, subjected to fake administrative prosecutions until the FSB came up with 'treason' charges over donations totalling 22 euros

Kyrylo Kostyhov Photo posted by Perviy Otdel

Russia’s FSB first seized Kyrylo Kostyhov in July 2025, although it was only in September last year that they came up with ‘treason’ charges against the 31-year-old from Kerch, in occupied Crimea. The charges appear to be based solely on records found on his telephone of very modest donations sent to Ukrainian charities.

In occupied Crimea, the FSB regularly abduct Ukrainian civilians and hold them incommunicado for months, sometimes, years, before admitting to their detention and laying charges. Kyrylo Kostyhov was, however, detained at Domodedovo airport in Moscow as he tried to leave Russia, with this, presumably, the reason that the FSB in Moscow first subjected him to so-called ‘carousel prosecutions’ – one administrative charge after another, with Russian ‘courts’ obliging by ordering brief terms of administrative arrest. The human rights group Perviy Otdel [First Department] reports that Kostyhov was detained at Domodevo on 14 July 2025 after his telephone was checked. Although the ‘treason’ charges are based on records of payments noticed then, the FSB clearly needed more time to fabricate a ‘case’ and first got him charged with swearing in the entrance to his apartment block. This was the first of three administrative charges on ‘petty hooliganism’ charges evidently used as pretexts to keep him in detention in July and August 2025.

It was in September that he was formally charged with ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code and remanded in custody by the Meshchansky court in Moscow. Ostorozhno, Novosti [Careful, the news] reported in November 2025 that Kostyhov’s social media pages were in Ukrainian and that he was active on Ukrainian chats in Russia. There he had spoken of having received a passport to go to Turkey and had gone to Istanbul several times to reinstate documents.

Russia accuses Kostyhov of having transferred money totalling a little over two thousand roubles (22 euros) to “Ukrainian funds”. There is no further detail as to what these funds were, however Russia’s FSB has for some time been treating any help for Ukraine as excuse for bringing ‘treason’ charges.

Any such ‘trial’ is held behind closed doors and is, more often than not, merely a hearing at which the sentence is passed. Convictions and sentences of between 12 and 20 years are essentially guaranteed.

Kyrylo Kostyhov’s mother lives in Ukraine and he has no relatives in Russia at all. If you can write to him (in Russian, and on ‘safe’ subjects), it will tell him that he is not forgotten (address below).

Kyrylo is not the first Ukrainian to have been detained after trying to either enter or leave Russia, and first subjected to ‘carousel’ prosecutions. In December 2022, Leniye Umerova, a 24-year-old Crimean Tatar who was living and working in Kyiv, set off to visit her family in occupied Crimea after her father was diagnosed with cancer. She was crossing the border between Georgia and the Russian Federation when she was stopped, and then ended up facing one absurd administrative charge after another, before facing mystery ‘spying’ charges. She was, thankfully released in a prisoner exchange in September 2024, after almost two years in Russian captivity.

Very many other Ukrainians remain imprisoned, with a mounting number of Russia’s prosecutions on supposed ‘treason’ charges because of donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces or Ukrainian humanitarian organizations.

The following list is, unfortunately, likely to be far from comprehensive:

Oleksandr Kachkurkin

Young Crimean deported from Kazakhstan to face huge sentence in Russia for donating money to Ukraine

Olha Hulchak; Olena Penza and Yulia Stanika

Russia sentences three Ukrainian women to 12 years for supporting Ukraine’s defenders

Iryna Sukhodei

Russia passes huge sentences against 65-year-old Melitopol pensioner and two other Ukrainians for their patriotism

Maryna Bilousova

Russia sentences 61-year-old Ukrainian to 12. 5 years for donation to Ukraine’s defenders

Yulia Stanika

Russian invaders’ ‘court’ sentences Ukrainian to 12. 5 years for patriotism

Lilia Kachkariova and Svitlana Dovhopola