A Russian court has sentenced a Ukrainian abducted from Melitopol in April 2022 to almost five years’ imprisonment for involvement in a perfectly legal Ukrainian organization on Ukrainian territory before Russia’s invasion. The trial of Pavlo Kyshynets and sentence were politically motivated and lawless but should, at least, have meant that he would soon be released. They will not, as the court refused to take into account the first year that Kyshynets spent in Russian captivity, with this only one of the damning irregularities in Russia’s persecution of the 34-year-old Ukrainian.
Pavlo Kyshynets (b. 4.12.1991) was, reportedly, targeted by the Russians from the moment they seized control of Melitopol at the beginning of March 2022. According to the Centre for Journalist Investigations [CJI], the Russians posted a video at the end of March, claiming this to be from Kyshynets’ telephone. The video showed the beating of a pro-Russian activist Maksym Chorny and ‘abduction’ in 2014 of another pro-Russian activist, Kateryna Umanets. She was later installed by the Russians as ‘head’ of occupied Kyrylivka, then subsequently dismissed for embezzlement. The video stated that the Russians were looking for Kyshynets.
They found and seized him on 25 April 2022. Kyshynets disappeared, with nothing known of his whereabouts until 13 October 2022 when several Russian propaganda media broadcast a report on his supposed ‘arrest’, claiming that he was a ‘Ukrainian Security Service [SBU] agent’ and / or that he was a member of Right Sector, and that he had been forced by the SBU to “plan disturbances, using weapons he had stored in three garages.” It was claimed that the SBU had forced him to agree by threatening to abduct his four-year son. It is clear both from Kyshynets’ appearance and the grotesque nature of the charges that any ‘confession’ had been extracted through torture.
Kyshynets was added to Russia’s notorious ‘register of terrorists and extremists’ in September 2024. This register contains the names of a huge number of recognized Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners, and is often the first indication that the Russians are planning some kind of ‘trial’ of Ukrainian civilians abducted from occupied territory and held incommunicado for months, or even years.
Russia has thus far staged two ‘trials’ of Pavlo Kyshynets, with both taking place before the Leninsky district court in Rostov-on-Don. Both hinged only on his alleged involvement in Right Sector, with the ‘confessions’ tortured out of him quietly forgotten.
In 2025, Kyshynets was convicted of ‘involvement in an extremist organization’, and sentenced to four years in a medium-security prison colony. The appeal against that sentence was held before the Rostov regional court in August 2025, with that court reducing the term of imprisonment by just two months. This was despite the fact that Kyshynets had to provide for a small child, as well as his elderly mother and grandmother.
It was, of course, also despite the astounding lawlessness of the charges. The prosecution had claimed that Kyshynets, who is now 34, had been a member of ‘Right Sector’ and had, from January 2015 through February 2022, made monthly payments to the party.
It is immaterial whether or not he did so, as there was absolutely nothing illegal about either the membership or the payments. . The fact that Russia has demonized ‘Right Sector’ and, in late 2014, outlawed it in Russia as an ‘extremist organization’ cannot change the fact that this is a Ukrainian organization, active and legal on Ukrainian territory. This remains the case to this day, but up till February 2022, Russia was not even claiming to have annexed Melitopol.
The second sentence was only reported in August 2026, although it was passed by the same Leninsky district court in Rostov back in March this year. The second sentence was on a charge of ‘financing an extremist organization’ with Kyshynets this time sentenced to four years and 10 months’ medium-security imprisonment. The two sentences will at least be merged, however the court refused to count the sentence as beginning in April 2022 and instead dated it from when Russia finally admitted to holding him, in March 2023. This was despite the clear evidence that Kyshynets was taken prisoner much earlier and subjected to torture to force out the videoed ‘confession’ broadcast on Russian state media.
