Svitlana Kolomiyets, a former Ukrainian border guard and mother of three has been formally remanded in custody in occupied Simferopol. She is facing a sentence of up to 20 years on the ‘treason’ charges that Russia has been bringing against a huge, and ever-mounting, number of Ukrainian citizens since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. All ‘trials’ on these charges are held behind closed doors, with the only thing known with tragic certainty is that convictions and sentences are guaranteed. In occupied Crimea alone, several mothers of young children have been sentenced to 15 years on mystery ‘treason’ charges, and the fact that Svitlana’s three daughters are just 14, 11 and 3 is unlikely to make any difference to the sentence.
Zarema Bariieva from the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre reports that Svitlana Kolomiyets was born in Simferopol but moved to Chernihiv after her studies and served from 2009 in Ukraine’s Border Guard Service. It was there that she first married. Her former husband, who was also a border guard and the father of her two eldest daughters, was killed in 2022, defending Mariupol.
Kolomiyets left the Border Guard Service in 2017 and, due to family circumstances, returned to Crimea where she and her daughters lived with her mother. She worked in the beauty industry, seemingly becoming an expert on growing / enhancing eyelashes. Her third daughter was not quite three when her mother was taken prisoner.
Although seized on the ‘treason’ charges on 23 April 2026, Kolomiyets had faced a suspect administrative prosecution in July 2025. She was then accused of using foul language in a public place (under Article 20.1 § 1 of Russia’s administrative code) and sentenced to five days ‘administrative arrest’. Over the last four years, the Russian FSB have, on many occasions, used one administrative prosecution after another (so-called ‘carousel prosecutions’) to ensure that a person remains imprisoned until criminal charges have been fabricated, and the FSB are willing to admit the abducted person’s ‘arrest’. Although Bariieva speaks of Kolomiyets being taken into custody again in April 2025, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project writes that it is not clear whether Kolomiyets was, in fact, released after the five-day sentence, or whether she was held without charges. It is the latter situation that has become shockingly common in occupied Crimea, with several men and women essentially abducted and disappearing for a year or longer before officially being charged with ‘treason’. On 8 April 2026, the FSB in occupied Crimea claimed to have “detained an agent of Ukraine’s Security Service” and produced a video in which the 26-year-old woman was heard providing a ‘confession’ which corresponds to the FSB allegations. This was, in fact, Sakha Manhubi, a young mother bringing up two small children alone who had been held incommunicado for around 15 months.
Russia has shown no mercy and even its own regulations which, for example, allow for a sentence to be deferred until the youngest child is 14, do not seem to ever be followed when its comes to Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners. Niyara Ersmambetova (3.10.1987), who was also bringing up two children alone, was abducted just seven days after her mother’s funeral and was held incommunicado for six months before being sentenced to 15 years on ‘treason’ charges. It was claimed that Niyara had helped the partisan resistance movement ATESH and had passed on information about a fuel depot and about the location of anti-aircraft defence systems. Oleksandra Strilets (b. 26.06.2000) was taken into custody to serve a 12-year sentence on ‘treason’ charges when the younger of two very small daughters, who had been born premature, was still in intensive care.
Memorial writes that Kolomiyets herself believes that her arrest is likely linked with her earlier service in Ukraine’s Border Guard Service. No more has been needed, and less has been used as a pretext for politically motivated persecution in Crimea or any occupied territory. It seems likely that the FSB get bonuses or promotion for churning out ‘good statistics’ on ‘treason’, ‘spying’ and ‘terrorism’ charges. Since they know that ‘courts’ will hand down the needed convictions, regardless of obviously fabricated evidence, absurd charges and the use of torture, there no longer appear to be any restraints on lawlessness.
