70-year-old Svitlana Loi could be heard from the prisoner’s ‘cage’ on 25 August 2026, quietly singing a deeply poignant Ukrainian song. Seconds later, a Russian-appointed ‘judge’ from the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ arrived and upheld the 15-year sentence passed against Svitlana on 10 February 2026 for donations to help Ukraine’s Armed Forces. That same illegitimate ‘court’ on 26 August also sentenced a 74-year-old pensioner from occupied Berdiansk to 14 years. She too was claimed to have committed ‘treason’ by donating 1500 UAH (less than 30 euros) to the defenders of her own country.
Russia’s mounting persecution of men and women in their sixties and seventies for remaining true to Ukraine is both brutal and exceptionally cynical. Russia has made it next to impossible for any Ukrainians on occupied territory to not take Russian citizenship, with the situation especially hard for pensioners who are otherwise deprived of access to healthcare and, probably, to any means of subsistence. Having thus forced them to accept a Russian passport, the occupying state then weaponizes this, calling Ukrainian citizens ‘Russians’ and charging them with ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, for the smallest donations to the defenders of their Ukrainian homeland.
Even where the person’s name is known, any ‘trial’ is held behind closed doors. In most cases, there are legitimate grounds for suspecting that there were no hearings as such, just that at which the predetermined ‘guilty’ verdict and sentence are passed. In a terrifying number of cases, the only chance of even identifying the victim is if their family or friends are able to contact human rights groups.
Of the elderly lady from Berdiansk in Zaporizhzhia oblast whose sentence was reported by the so-called ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’, we know only that she was born in 1952, with this meaning that the aggressor state is willing to imprison her until she is 88 for donations worth almost 30 euros to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. With the ‘court’ identifying her only as ‘Z’, there is no way of even ascertaining how long she has been imprisoned, and how long she was held incommunicado before the illegal charges under Russian law were laid. While she may not have been subjected to direct physical torture, it is extremely likely that she is being held in appalling conditions, without access to healthcare, with this constituting medical torture. She allegedly received Russian citizenship in October 2023, with this shortly before the Russian occupiers blocked any access to healthcare to those without a Russian passport. She was ‘accused of’ having made donations, amounting to 1500 UAH, via a Ukrainian bank’s mobile app “to accounts used to finance the Ukrainian Armed Forces in activities aimed against the security of the Russian Federation.”
Russia is also effectively hiding the identity of the ‘judges’ implicated in these sentences. In this case, the individual ignored not only the fact that the ‘trial’ was in violation of the Geneva Convention which prohibits the application of Russian legislation against Ukrainians on occupied territory but also sentenced a 74-year-old to 14 years on monstrous charges and then, cynically, added a further one year’s restricted liberty were the elderly woman to survive to the end of the sentence.
The Berdiansk woman is one of two female Ukrainian political prisoners born in 1952 and now in Russian captivity. Vira Ivanivna Yevtushenko is from occupied Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia oblast and has been held in detention since 4 March 2026. She too is facing ‘treason’ charges, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, with it quite likely that she too was seized and is facing a monstrous sentence for not betraying her country.
As reported, Svitlana Loi (b. 10.06.1956) is from Tokmak in Zaporizhzhia oblast, and ‘was accused’ of having made 24 donations to the Ukrainian Armed Forces, totalling around 700 euros, from January through November 2024. The sentence of 15 years’ Marginally more information is known, with the ‘case’ passed to the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ on 26 December 2025. A ‘hearing’ was then scheduled for 22 January 2026 but adjourned because ‘the defendant’ had not been brought to the ‘court’. There was, thus, no hearing before sentence was passed on 10 February 2026 by a Russian ‘judge’, Nikolai Sergeevich Yurgov, who has no right to engage in any such activities on occupied territory., on 10 February, He sentenced her to 15 years, with this meaning that she would be released when she was near 85, and still added a year’s restricted liberty. That monstrous sentence has now come into force. Svitlana can be heard singing “Рідна мати моя” [Ridna maty moya, or Rushnychok] here
In none of the cases reported, is it clear how the Russians found out about the donations with it possible that this uncertainty and sense of being under permanent surveillance may be quite deliberate.
The following list of Ukrainians aged 60 and over who were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for donations to their own country’s Armed Forces is, unfortunately, unlikely to be full. Although there are especially acute concerns about the health of Halyna Bekter, Russia is endangering all of them given the conditions in Russian prisons and the effective lack of any adequate healthcare.
Halyna Bekhter
Serhiy Chebukin
Ivan Chorny
Pensioners and mothers targeted for Russia’s ‘treason trial’ terror in occupied Ukraine
Vitaliy Ilyin
Iryna Sukhovei
Mykola Tynkov (b.1955)
10-year sentence for love of Ukraine against 71-year-old pensioner under Russian occupation
