Vitaliy Trofymchuk is turning 20 on 29 June 2026 in a Russian-controlled prison in occupied Donetsk oblast. The young Ukrainian from Velyka Bilozerka in Zaporizhzhia was sentenced in January 2026 to five and a half years for two posts on social media critical of the Russians occupying his Ukrainian home and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The sentence is potentially life-threatening as Viitaliy was born with HIV and needs daily antiretroviral medication, which he will almost certainly not receive in the appalling conditions of Russian-controlled prisons.
Vitaliy as just 15 when the Russians invaded and 19 when they arrested him over the two social media posts. The documents read out in court stated that he had been orphaned very early and was brought up by his grandmother and uncle. Before the Russian invasion, he had received a sickness and disability allowance because of his congenital HIV.
Russia has made it effectively impossible on any occupied territory to not take Russian citizenship, especially in any case involving specific healthcare needs. Vitaliy received a Russian passport in 2023 but was not able to organize Russian disability status. He had earned a pittance helping buy vegetables for a shop.
It is not clear when he was first taken prisoner, but he was only able to take part in the ‘trial’ at Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court by video link from the SIZO, or remand prison, in occupied Donetsk.
Vitaliy Trofymchuk was charged over two social media posts. The first was in response to an invitation for thoughts from the Ukrainian Telegram channel Enerhodar Today following the statement by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “the first step for our victory plan is Ukraine being invited into NATO” (with this making it possible to ensure geopolitical certainty in Europe and weaken Russian aggression). The post asked people to suggest the second step. Vitaliy (‘Vitashka’) wrote: “Step 2: burn and blow up all of Russia”. In response to a now deleted comment, he wrote: “the most important thing is that this country doesn’t exist. While Russia is there, there will be war, regardless against which country, because that country is a terrorist and the bald prick Putya [i.e. Putin] will say that there’s a reason for it. I’ve lived under occupation for three years and see what “Rusnia” does” (the pejorative term ‘rusnya’ for Russians became common after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine]
The words were strong, but hardly the ‘calls to terrorism’, which the aggressor state’s prosecution chose to accuse him of, under Article 205.2 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code. Similar and considerably worse comments are regularly made by Russian politicians and propagandists, and not only on social media.
On 12 April 2025, in a chat with only 40 subscribers, Vitaliy reacted to a photo of three teenagers holding a Russian flag by writing “shoot [them]”. That one word alone was used as pretext for charging him with ‘calls to extremism’ under Article 280 § 2 of the same Russian criminal code.
During the ‘trial’, Vitaliy called his words “emotional and ill-considered”, but explained them by the fact that he kept on coming upon videos on the Internet “where Russian military kill prisoners of war and carry out strikes on peaceful cities.”
Mediazona reports that the prosecutor read out testimony which Vitaliy had supposedly given during the investigation. This included the words that he “hates Russians” and that he “always wanted to influence the Russian leadership’s decision to carry out its special military operation and to encourage it to reject its plan to join Zaporizhzhia oblast to the Russian Federation”.
There would be nothing in the slightest wrong in trying to get Russia to reject its criminal plans to invade Ukraine, but the words are evidently not the young man’s. This is especially important in another part of the ‘testimony’ where Vitaliy is claimed to have spelled out that, in writing ‘Shoot’, he meant put a gun to their heads and fire in order to kill them.
Vitaliy did have a lawyer who succeeded in establishing that he had merely placed his signature on the alleged testimony.
Neither the evidently disproportionate charges, nor the risks posed by imprisonment to a very young man with a serious health condition, were taken into account by ‘judge’ Denis Vasilievich Stepanov. On 14 January 2026 he sentenced Vitaliy Trofymchuk to five and a half years in a medium-security prison colony. There had been just three hearings before the sentence was passed, and an appeal against the sentence has been lodged.
In declaring Vitaliy Trofymchuk a political prisoner, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project noted that the comments over which Trofymchuk was charged were “of an emotional and rhetorical nature and do not pose a real threat to society.” Russia is also in violation of international humanitarian law through such prosecution of a Ukrainian citizen on occupied territory according to Russian laws.
“A real term of imprisonment for two short comments against a very young man who was forced to reach maturity in conditions of occupation and war is in itself brutal and disgraceful. In addition, for Trofymchuk, who suffers from a serious illness, imprisonment is particularly dangerous – deprivation of liberty in the conditions of a Russian prison colony could cause irreparable damage to his health.”
Please help publicize Russia's appalling persecution of Vitaliy Trofymchuk! This is the brutality and repression that Russia brings to all occupied territory, and Vitaliy’s health issues place him in particular danger.
There is an address (on occupied territory) for writing to Vitaliy on the Memorial site here
