Russia’s illegal ‘Luhansk people’s republic high court’ has sentenced 38-year-old Volodymyr Lukashenko to a record 18-years’ maximum-security imprisonment for supposed ‘spying’. The only information about the charges against the Ukrainian read as though copy-pasted from countless other such ‘trials’ behind closed doors against Ukrainians on spying charges under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code. The secrecy is particularly disturbing because of the massive sentence and also the extreme measures that Russia is applying to block any communications in and to Rubizhne and neighbouring Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk
This fake ‘court’ has been passing sentences for over 10 years on ‘spying’ charges, with the victims generally Ukrainians with a pronounced pro-Ukrainian position or who did not conceal their opposition to the Russian proxy ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ [‘LPR’]. Russia stopped pretending to not be in control of its proxy ‘republic’ in early 2022, yet there remains near total secrecy about the ‘court’ and such ‘trials’. It is not known, for example, who passed the sentence, and whether Lukashenko had an independent lawyer. Since he may well have been imprisoned for two years or more already and could have been held prisoner, and likely tortured, for months or years before being officially charged, there is every reason to treat the ‘court’s’ claim that Lukashenko admitted the charges and ‘repented’ with caution, if not scepticism.
It is claimed that, in 2023, Lukashenko, “living in Rubizhne and being an opponent of the special military operation”, telephoned his wife who was living in government-controlled Ukraine. During their conversation, she proposed that he gather information “of a military nature to be passed on to Ukraine’s Armed Forces”. He agreed and over three months passed on information about places of deployment of Russian military personal and technology in Rubizhne “so that they could be fired on by the enemy”. Lukashenko was sentenced to 18 years, with the first three in a prison, the harshest of Russia’s penal institutions, with the remainder in a maximum-security prison colony. Even without the serious grounds for doubting that this met any of the standards of a fair trial, Russia’s prosecution of Ukrainians from occupied territory under Russian legislation would be illegal. Unfortunately, the only named player involved in the travesty was Sergei Pankratov, who is described as ‘deputy LPR prosecutor’.
The sentence was significantly harsher than those passed in recent months by other occupation ‘courts’ despite near identical ‘indictments’. On 5 June 2026, the occupation ‘Kherson regional prosecutor’ reported that another 38-year-old Ukrainian, Anatoliy Marchuk had been sentenced to 13 years’ maximum-security imprisonment under Article 276. The only difference, aside from location, was in timing, with Marchuk claimed to have gathered the information from March to June 2022. There is no information about how long he had been in captivity before the charges were laid, and then before sentence was passed.
On 28 May 2026, the same ‘LPR high court’ sentenced 57-year-old Kostiantyn Miroshnichenko to 13.5 years under Article 276. The ‘LPR prosecutor’ claimed that he had passed on the same kind of information about military movement in September 2022 in Svatove raion to Ukraine’s Security Service. It seems, however, that the original report, in February 2026, gave different times and different means for contacting the Security Service.
On 24 November 2025, 25-year-old Serhiy Honcharov was sentenced by the same ‘LPR high court’ on the same copy-pasted charges, to 14 years’ maximum-security imprisonment.
It is not just the dates for the supposed ‘spying’ which make it likely that all of the men have been imprisoned for a long time. They clearly do not have Russian citizenship (they would, in that case, have been convicted of ‘treason through spying’, under Article 275). Russia is very aggressively foisting its citizenship and it is next to impossible by now to live on occupied territory without the aggressor state’s passport.
