Russian FSB appear to have made another brazen attempt to ‘re-arrest’ a Ukrainian political prisoner as he was due to be freed. Serhiy Buhaichuk has already spent eight years in Russian captivity after being arrested essentially because he was Ukrainian. That was clearly seen as insufficient and he was told by the men who stopped him at the exit that he better not imagine that they’d simply free him.
Fortunately, a Russian activist, Olga Bendar was waiting to meet Buhaichuk outside Prison Colony No. 1 in Tula oblast and has been able to report what happened. She first explained on 10 July that she had stood for a very long time outside the prison colony and it was already clear that something was wrong. Then the doors flew open and three men in plain clothes came out, dragging Buhaichuk who was handcuffed to one of them, and pushing him into a car. He saw Olga and called out for her to help, saying that he was being tortured, that they had planted a Ukrainian flag on him and were fabricating a new prosecution.
Thankfully, Buhaichuk was able to get in contact with her from the Centre for holding foreign citizens pending deportation where he had been taken. Ten days before he was due to be released, he had been thrown, on a trumped-up pretext, into a punishment cell. During that time, he had had no access to his personal belongings, with that, almost certainly, the reason that the pretext was used. Having been freed from this prison cell literally on the day of his scheduled release, he grabbed his possessions and headed to the exit. It was there that he was accosted by the men in plain clothes who told him he shouldn’t hope to be freed so easily. They began ‘searching’ him and not only pulled out a Ukrainian flag from his documents and wrote ‘Azov’ on the flag with a marker pen.
There should be nothing ‘illegal’ about having a Ukrainian flag, but that is pure theory and a pretext would be found for persecuting a person on occupied territory and in Russia. It is also inconceivable that a person held prisoner for 8 years, and constantly facing searches, would have been able to keep such a flag. While the flag alone would make it difficult to bring criminal charges, the word ‘Azov’ would not. The Azov Battalion arose as a volunteer formation in 2014 for Ukrainians defending Donbas against Russian aggression. It was soon incorporated into Ukraine’s Armed Forces and played a major role in the defence of Mariupol in 2022. It was widely understood that the Russian supreme court ruling on 2 August 2022 declaring the Azov Regiment ‘a terrorist organization’ was aimed at providing a pretext for bringing insane ‘terrorism’ charges against Ukrainian prisoners of war. This has, indeed, proven to be the case, although Russia has also used the flawed and baseless ruling as pretext for bringing criminal charges against civilians who took part in defending Donbas seven or eight years before the ruling or those who send donations to the Azov Regiment. The word ‘Azov’, which the FSB officers demonstrated their power and lawlessness by writing in Buhaichuk’s presence, could be used to bring ‘terrorism’ charges, potentially carrying another long sentence.
Fortunately, Buhaichuk refused to sign the protocol claiming that the flag had been ‘found’ in his personal belongings. He did so despite being beaten by his captors.
It is unclear whether the fact that Buhaichuk is now in a holding facility for foreigners awaiting deportation is a good sign, or whether the FSB are still fermenting plans for new charges against him.
Russia has been staging politically motivated ‘trials’ against Crimean Tatars and other Ukrainians since soon after its invasion of Crimea in 2014. While in many cases, people have been targeted for their civic journalism or activism, for their open support for Ukraine, etc., on other occasions, it seems that a person was targeted merely because they are Ukrainian.
This was the case with the arrests, first in May 2018 of Ukrainian coach driver Oleh Chaban, and then, on 11 July 2018, of Serhiy Buhaichuk (b. 21 May 1975), a train conductor from Rivne in Western Ukraine. It was through the lawyer representing Ukrainian journalist and political prisoner Roman Sushchenko that it was learned that another Ukrainian was being held in the FSB-controlled Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. He had been charged with ‘smuggling’ a Glok 19 pistol and parts for it to Moscow (another report mentions the pistol but asserts that there were also 10 barrels for a Makarov pistol). He was alleged to have done this as part of a gang of three people. Nothing was found during the search of Buhaichuk and his possessions, and the charges were based solely on the ‘testimony’ of a Russian detained much earlier and held in a SIZO [a pre-trial detention centre]. The latter ‘cooperated’ with the investigators, almost certainly either under pressure, or through promises of a reduction in the charges against him. There was supposed to be a third person in the alleged ‘gang’, a person called ‘Vladimir’ whose identity (or existence) remained a mystery.
The case was run by the FSB, with Buhaichuk charged under Article 222 § 3 of Russia’s criminal code - Illegal acquisition, transfer, sale, storage, transportation, or bearing of firearms or their components, if carried out by an organized group. Buhaichuk consistently denied the charges and said that he had ‘confessed’ under duress, while held incommunicado, without any contact with an independent lawyer.
Despite the lack of any evidence, except the testimony of one man already in detention and with a likely vested interest in ‘cooperating’ with the FSB, Buhaichuk was sentenced on 12 February 2020 by a court in Bryansk to nine and a half years’ imprisonment – longer than the 5-8 years envisaged by Russia’s criminal code. The appeal court on 9 June 2020 merely reduced the sentence to eight years.
Serhiy Buhaichuk, whose adult daughter’s first child was born soon after her father’s arrest and whose 11-year-old son grew to adulthood without his father, served that deeply flawed sentence to the last day, and even that proved to not satisfy his Russian captors.
See also:
Hennadiy Lymeshko
Ukrainian political prisoner abducted and given a new sentence after 8 years in Russian prison
Oleh Prykhodko
