Russia’s Southern District Military Court has sentenced Oleksandr Maliarenko to five and a half years’ imprisonment over eight comments on social media. The Russian aggressor state which regularly uses ballistic missiles and drones against civilian targets claimed that the Ukrainian from occupied Sevastopol had, in his posts, ‘justified terrorism’ and made public calls to ‘terrorism’ or ‘extremism’ through the support he expressed for the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Those actions, unlike Russia’s, were directed against the invaders of Maliarenko’s country.
Even where ‘trials’ are supposedly open, Russia has made it difficult to learn more than the prosecution and court choose to reveal. The 15 supposedly offending posts or comments are not shown, and the information on the court website concealed the Maliarenko’s name, making it difficult to know about the hearing and verdict before these were reported by occupation or Russian sources.
It is, nonetheless, clear from the official Russian sources that the charges were based on a serious, if typical, distortion of the facts. Russia is claiming that illegally annexed Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, is ‘part of the Russian Federation’, and resorts to verbal manipulation, such as referring to Ukraine’s Armed Forces as ‘armed formations’. All of this is aimed at presenting as ‘terrorists’ the defenders of a country whose sovereignty and state borders Russia once committed itself to uphold but then invaded. Such dishonest ploys are used to blur the inconvenient truth that, like it or not, Russia’s illegal Crimean bridge, other bridges, military factories, etc., whether on occupied territory or in Russia, are legitimate targets in the face of Russia’s war of aggression. While slightly different, Ukraine’s military incursion into the Kursk oblast in Russia can be viewed in the same light, especially since Ukraine’s military leadership had specific defence motives (protecting forces on a part of the frontline under intense Russian attack).
The FSB, prosecutors and ‘judges’ who take part in such prosecutions are well-aware that Ukrainians expressing support for attacks on the illegal Crimean bridge which Russia is intensively using for its war against Ukraine do not and could not possibly constitute ‘calling to terrorist activities’ or ‘justifying extremism’.
According to the court’s press service, Maliarenko was charged with eight counts of ‘justifying terrorism’ or of ‘public calls to carry out terrorist activities’ (under Article 205.2 § 2 pf Russia’s criminal code) and seven of ‘public calls to carry out extremist activities (Article 280 § 2). It is clear that these included approval for Ukraine’s attacks on the Crimea bridge and on military and, supposedly, civilian infrastructure. The purported ‘calls to carry out extremist activities’ are over alleged calls to commit “acts of violence against citizens of the Russian Federation.” Unlike Russia, Ukraine is not targeting civilians, and any such calls are likely to have been against the Russians’ armed forces or collaborators installed by the invaders in leading positions on occupied territory. Russia regularly stages fake ‘trials’ on ‘terrorism’ charges and passes huge sentences, up to life imprisonment, against Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians. The posts or comments were from 28 April 2024 through 4 April 2025, with this possibly an indication of when Maliarenko was taken into custody. There were a number of hearings, so it seems likely that Maliarenko disputed, in part or outright, the charges which made up the indictment. The sentence on 9 June 2026 of five and a half years’ imprisonment in a medium-security prison colony was passed by ‘judge’ Gurgen Serzhikovych Dovlatbekian. The latter has taken part in several other ‘trials’ of political prisoners.
Within ten days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia had introduced draconian provisions aimed at silencing and imprisoning Ukrainians or Russians who told the truth about the war crimes and crimes against humanity. In November 2025, for example, Kateryna Fomenko was sentenced by a Crimean occupation ‘court’ to five and a half years’ imprisonment for supposed ‘military fakes’ (Article 207.3 of Russia’s criminal code). While not known with any certainty what the aggressor state had called ‘fake’, Fomenko had been fined 45 thousand roubles on 26 May 2025 on another of the charges rushed in on 3 March 2022, namely Article 20.3.3 of Russia’s code of administrative offences (‘discrediting the Russian armed forces’). This was in connection with three comments under social media posts, with one of them reading: “If the Russians [rashisty] had reached Kyiv in 2022, there would have been mass disappearances, killings, filtration like on occupied territory now. They would have taken what they wanted, would have stuffed their pockets, they never needed negotiations”. In another, she repeats that any negotiations will be purely about gaining time.
While using administrative and criminal prosecution and 5.5 years for telling the truth about Russia’s war crimes, the regime is now also imprisoning Ukrainians for simply expressing support for Ukraine’s defence of its country. In the last year alone, there have been several such sentences against Ukrainians from occupied Crimea or other occupied territory.
See: Serhiy Obushny
Crimean pensioner sentenced to six years for social media comments against Russian aggression
Serhiy Tubolets
Tetiana Deviatkina
Russian invaders sentence Tetiana Deviatkina to 6 years for criticizing them on social media
