In the latest of a series of massive sentences against two or more Ukrainians from the same family, Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court has sentenced 61-year-old Hennadiy Kapralov (b. 26.09.1964) and his wife, Olha Kapralova (b. 5.01.1973) to 20 and 18 years, respectively. The court ignored both Hennadiy and Olha’s detailed and harrowing accounts of the torture to which they were subjected after their abduction in August 2023, as well as numerous discrepancies in the indictment against them and the third victim of this supposed ‘terrorist plot’ – Diliaver Kurshutov.
The prosecution claimed that Ukraine’s Security Service had, in 2023, created something that the aggressor state illegally occupying Ukrainian territory termed “a terrorist organization”. The couple are alleged to have expressed their willingness to assist this supposed ‘terrorist organization’ [‘TO’]. in May 2023. They were told, the indictment states, that the targets for the alleged ‘acts of terrorism’ were Russian military personnel and collaborators. The latter were referred to rather differently, of course, as “persons assisting the achievement of the objectives of Russia’s ‘special military operation’”. The ‘TO’ was to use explosive devices, as well as mixing toxic chemical substances into the individuals’ food and drink.
In June 2023, the Kapralovs, together with “another member of the ‘TO’”, doubtless, Kurshutov, are supposed to have established several places for carrying out explosions, using explosive devices disguised as power banks, with the targets allegedly a café and “the territory of a market”. The claim about the market is in conflict even with the prosecution’s own story, with it clear that, if there was a group of partisans, their targets were – legitimately – the Russian military invaders themselves and collaborators.
The defendants were “detained”, the report claims, saying that this prevented them from carrying out “their shared plan to carry out explosions and other actions with the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction (poisonous and toxic chemical substances)”.
It was also claimed that the Kapralovs had, in July 2023, placed an explosive device inside a children’s toy horse which Kapralov had transported in his car and hidden in a hiding place in the hollow of a tree near the road and had given another member of the ‘TO’ the coordinates of this. This appears to have been a way of justifying the huge sentence against Olha Kapralova, as she was claimed to have sewn the explosive device into the toy horse.
Olha Kapralova and her husband were accused of ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ under Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code); ‘a terrorist act’ (Article 205 § 2); ‘training in terrorist activities (Article 205.3) and explosives charges. They denied the charges, with their refusal to ‘cooperate’ with the prosecution and their detailed accounts of both their abduction and the torture they endured very likely having contributed to the huge sentences passed. The prosecutor demanded 22 and 21-year sentences. ‘Judge’ Maksym Mikhailovich Nikitin has already been involved in one show trial of men abducted from occupied Melitopol, and provided sentences that were not much smaller. Hennadiy Kapralov, who turns 62 on 26 September and has heart issues, was sentenced to 20 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the first five years in a prison, the worst of Russia’s penal institutions. A fine of 700 thousand roubles was also imposed. Olha Kapralova’s 18-year sentence is in what Russia calls a medium-security prison colony, with this the harshest in the case of women. The fine in her case was 600 thousand roubles.
The couple have both been imprisoned since August 2023 and cannot pay such monstrous fines, but they will mean that any money that the family could transfer to them for basic food and hygiene needs would be confiscated to pay the fines. The sentences will certainly be appealed however the outcome of any such appeal is almost certainly as tragically predetermined as the sentences passed by Maksym Nikitin on 10 September 2026.
Abductions, torture and alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction’
It is likely that Olha and Hennadiy Kapralov’s relatives, as well as those of Diliaver Kurshutov, knew nothing of their whereabouts or of what had happened to them from August 2023 when they were abducted, until 4 March 2024. Russian reports that day spoke of high-ranking military targets and showed a videoed ‘confession’ in which Kurshutov said that the plan had been to slip chemicals and methyl alcohol into soldiers’ food and drink. The allegations this time went far beyond the FSB’s normal claims about ‘thwarted terrorist attacks’ with Ukraine claimed to have been planning “terrorist attacks with the use of chemical weapons deploying an equivalent to BZ, a military-grade incapacitating agent which causes delirium and hallucinations to the point of helplessness. The reports also pretended that Kurshutov had only just been ‘arrested’, although the video made it clear that this had been many months earlier.
The charges against Diliaver Kurshutov were more or less the same as those against Olha and Hennadiy Kapralov, however many of the grandiose claims from the March 2024 were quietly forgotten in the final indictment. He was sentenced on 23 September 2025 by ‘judge’ Oleg Viktorovich Volkov from the same Southern District Military Court to ten years’ maximum-security imprisonment for supposedly planning to poison Russian military and ‘amassing chemical weapons of mass destruction.’ Although he agreed not to retract the earlier ‘confession’, almost certainly extracted through torture, he does not appear to have, in any way, incriminated the Kapralovs. See: Telling omissions in Russia's show trial claiming Ukraine’s use of ‘chemical weapons of mass destruction’
Although the Kapralovs were mentioned back in March 2024, effectively nothing more was heard of them until MediaZona reported on Hennadiy Kapralov’s testimony to the court on 26 May 2026.
Kapralov did, effectively acknowledge some part in resistance activities, with these seemingly confined to collecting items from an old, overgrown cemetery, and, on the second occasion, offering to keep hold of the box. If true, it seems likely that both men believed that the boxes contained something that could, for example, explode, but were doing no more than holding on to them. Even had there been more, these would still be acts of resistance against an invading and occupying power, not ‘terrorism’ and Russia would still be in violation of the Geneva Convention through its prosecution under Russian legislation and forced deportation of Ukrainians from occupied territory.
On 26 May 2026, Hennadiy Kapralov described how he had been mercilessly tortured and also forced to listen, bound and unable to intervene, while his wife was being tortured. During her testimony on 31 August, Olha Kapralova described how she and Hennadiy had been abducted on 21 August 2023. She described in detail the torture and threats to her children and grandchildren used to extract a fake ‘confession’. She rejected the charges and retracted the ‘testimony’ obtained under duress while she was held incommunicado, without charges having been laid. She explained that from August through November 2023, she had been held prisoner by the FSB without any official registering of arrest or court order remanding her in custody. During this time, she had been denied any access to her family or to a lawyer, with measures taken to conceal both the places where she was held and the names of her captors.
“During that first period I was subjected to brutal physical and psychological pressure. I was threatened, including through (threats to) the security of my children and grandchildren. By November 2023, I was in such a state that I was willing to sign everything that they proposed.”
“They used electric currents against me, asphyxiation, injected me with some kind of substance; beat me. I don’t know what with as I had a bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back.”
Please write, if you can, to Hennadiy Kapralov and Olha Kapralova (there is no address at present for Diliaver Kurshutov)
Letters need to be in Russian, handwritten and on ‘safe’ subjects. If this is a problem, there are passable translations via ChatGPT and similar, however it would be best to avoid idioms, which tend to turn into porridge when translated!
Gennadiy Kapralov
344064, г. Ростов-на-Дону, ул. Тоннельная, д. 4, ФКУ СИЗО-5 ГУФСИН России по Ростовской области,
Капралов Геннадий Геннадьевич, 1964 г. р.
Olha Kapralova
346408, Ростовская область, г. Новочеркасск, ул. Украинская, д. 1, ФКУ СИЗО-3 ГУФСИН России по Ростовской области,
Капралова Ольга Анатольевна, 1973 г. р.
