A kangaroo court in Russian occupied Kherson oblast has sentenced 55-year-old Natalia Povietkina to 12 years’ imprisonment. The Ukrainian was accused of ‘treason’ by the aggressor state which invaded her home in Skadovsk in 2022 and forced her to take Russian citizenship. The secrecy imposed over all such cases makes it impossible to verify specific allegations however the charges were essentially identical to those in countless other ‘treason’ or ‘spying trials’ staged since 2022, with convictions and long sentences essentially guaranteed.
As is disturbingly often the case in parts of Ukraine that came under occupation in 2022, virtually nothing is known about Natalia Povietkina and when she was taken prisoner. We know only what can be deduced from the charges announced, together with the 12-year sentence, on 9 April 2026. She was claimed to have, at the beginning of May 2023, voluntarily gathered information about the places of deployment of Russian military technology and personnel. This was, purportedly, on the instructions of unnamed representatives of Ukraine’s Security Service. She had then, allegedly, sent the information via a messenger app to her ‘handler’. These claims invariably end with a copy-pasted sentence asserting that the information could have been used to direct fire at places of deployment of Russian military and others.
We thus know that June 2023 was the earliest that Povietkina was taken prisoner, however that leaves nearly three years. If, as is quite possible, she was abducted because of pro-Ukrainian views, her captors would have immediately set about examining her telephone and could have simply found a photo viewed as ‘incriminating’.
The charge of ‘treason’ was under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, with the sentence passed by the occupation ‘Kherson regional court’ on, or before, 9 April. All such ‘trials’ are held behind closed doors, with it quite possible that there was only the day of which the sentence was announced. As well as the 12-year term of imprisonment, Povietkina was sentenced to a further year of restricted liberty and a large 100 thousand rouble fine.
The Russians began abducting civilians in any part of Ukraine that came under occupation. They specifically targeted public figures, volunteers, former military servicemen and essentially anyone with a pronounced pro-Ukrainian position. Of almost two thousand Ukrainians abducted from Kherson oblast alone, over 923 remain in captivity. While some, like Iryna Horobtsova, Serhiy Tsyhipa, Appaz Kurtamet and his father Khalil Kurtamet were later subjected to show trials, others continue to be held incommunicado, with no charges laid. The latter include Ihor Kolykhaev, Mayor of Kherson, and Oleksandr Babych, Mayor of Hola Prystan. In March 2026, Oleksiy Butenko, Head of war crimes investigations at the Kherson Regional Prosecutor’s Office, reported that at least 29 civilians, abducted from Kherson oblast, had been tortured to death or had died from lack of treatment in Russian captivity. This number may well be considerably higher, as many civilians simply disappeared, including 77-year-old Spanish volunteer Mariano Garcia Calatayud [Mario]
It is also difficult to keep up, as sentences are being churned out on ‘treason’, ‘spying’ and so-called ‘terrorism’ charges on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Most ‘treason trials’ are either over alleged ‘passing on of information about military movements, or over donations to Ukraine’s Armed Forces or Ukrainian charities.
See also:
Russia sentences three Ukrainian women to 12 years for supporting Ukraine’s defenders
