Over a year after Maryna Kovalenko was seized in occupied Alushta, a Crimean occupation ‘court’ has sentenced the 59-year-old former Luhansk school head to 13 years on absurd ‘treason’ charges which she would have had no time to ‘commit’ before her abduction. There was, at most, one preliminary hearing, followed by two unexplained adjournments, before the ‘court’ retired to prepare the tragically predetermined verdict and 13-year sentence.
Although Maryna Kovalenko is from occupied Luhansk and, according to the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project, is the former Director of the Luhansk Children’s Art School No. 1, her son is serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces. This was mentioned in the prosecution’s indictment and may well have been the reason for her being targeted.
The 13-year sentence, with a subsequent 18-month term of restricted liberty, was passed on 22 July 2026 by ‘judge’ Victor Nikolaevich Skliarov from the occupation ‘Crimean high court’. This individual has handed down multiple ‘sentences’ on such charges illegally laid by the Russian occupying state, although he is himself almost certainly facing treason charges under Ukrainian legislation for breaching his oath to Ukraine. All such ‘treason trials’ are held behind closed doors, and since Kovalenko’s name was concealed on the ‘court website’ information, it was difficult to even follow the sentencing until the occupation ‘prosecutor’ chose to report it.
As reported, Maryna Kovalenko (b. 9 July 1967) was abducted from Alushta on 10 June 2025, with nothing known about her whereabouts for around eight months. It was only on 27 February that Crimean Tribunal learned from a source in the occupation prison service that she had been held, in total isolation, until the middle of February in SIZO-2, a remand prison believed to be under the control of Russia’s FSB and used primarily for political prisoners and civilians abducted from occupied territory. She had been transferred in the second half of February to another remand prison – SIZO-1. Since it became clear then that was being charged with ‘treason’ under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, it seemed likely that this was when her captors formally ‘arrested’ her and had an occupation ‘court’ remand her in custody.
It is not, in fact, clear when her captors admitted to holding Maryna Kovalenko, with Russia’s FSB typically abducting civilians and holding them for months incommunicado, without even admitting that a person is in their custody. These periods are generally used to force out ‘confessions’ through torture, psychological terror, threats against a person’s family or similar.
Although likely that she was acknowledged as in detention when transferred to SIZO-1, on 16 June 2026, the Russian state-controlled TASS agency reported her ‘arrest for passing on data about educational institutions’ as though it had just happened. TASS called Kovalenko “a Ukrainian Security Service [SBU] agent’. It is noteworthy that Kovalenko’s own ‘confession’ and the TASS report talk of “passing on information about scientific and educational institutions”, while the FSB employee whom TASS interviews throws in a claim that Kovalenko was also expected to provide information about the movement of military technology.
It was claimed that Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] had ‘recruited’ Kovalenko when she was crossing the border between Ukraine and Poland. The FSB officer asserted that the SBU saw her as ‘dependent’ because her son is serving in Ukraine’s Armed Forces and therefore agreed to work with them. Kovalenko, who had been held in isolation, without a lawyer, was shown saying that she had signed an undertaking of cooperation on a confidential basis with Ukraine’s SBU. Having signed this, she asked what was expected of her and recounts the bizarre conversation that ensued. She was told “nothing in particular” and asked what she was involved in. She responded by asking what one can be involved in when you work in a music school, where you teach kids to play a musical instrument, sing, draw and dance. She says she was told that she would take photos and pass on some orders which Russia sends [the school]. The FSB press release embellishes this somewhat, claiming that her ‘handler’ instructed her to gather and pass on “information about the activities of scientific, educational and other institutions of the ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ and Crimea to which she had access through her job.” The FSB officer may have claimed a further task of informing about the movements of military technology as the charges seemed so weak. It would not be clear how much information Kovalenko could have about Russian military movements. It is equally unclear why she would be supposed to have information about educational and scientific institutions which would be of interest to the SBU.
The ‘occupation prosecutor’s’ report is extremely short, but gives dates that make the charges even more implausible. It was, purportedly, “established” that Kovalenko had been “recruited by Ukraine’s SBU while crossing the Ukrainian border” in May 2025. She was alleged to have returned to the so-called ‘Luhansk people’s republic’ and, while at work, to have “photographed several documents containing personal data and official information and sent the information received to representatives of foreign intelligence service.” She was seized by the Crimean FSB after she arrived in Alushta on holiday. In this case, Russia is probably not only concealing the real date on which Kovalenko was taken prisoner (10 June 2025) because of the unlawful forms of coercion used to extract her ‘confession’, but also because the timing is so ludicrously tight. She is supposed to have signed an undertaking to ‘spy’ at some point in May 2025, then sped back to work in order to photograph personal date of unexplained interest to Ukrainian Intelligence, only to get to Alushta in time to be abducted on 10 June 2025.
