It is not only the savagery of the 25-year sentence handed down by a Russian court against 41-year-old Yevhen Karpenko from occupied Mariupol that is so astoundingly cynical. The aggressor state which seized control of Karpenko’s native Mariupol by bombing hospitals, the Drama Theatre and residential buildings claimed that Karpenko was part of a ‘terrorist organization’ supposedly organized by Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU]. It was purely because Karpenko was accused of such fictitious ‘terrorism’, as well as of ‘treason’ because of the Russian citizenship forced on him by the invaders, that the sentence was so massive and entirely disproportionate to Karpenko’s alleged actions.
Yevhen Karpenko (b. 7 October 1984) was essentially accused merely of having received certain components of a homemade explosive device from a hiding place in occupied Mariupol, of having divided these into two parts and created two hiding places for these in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast. While scarcely to be expected that the Russian invaders would look kindly on such alleged or real acts of opposition to its occupation, claims that Ukrainian resistance to Russia’s aggression constitute ‘terrorism’ are manifestly cynical and absurd.
Even this is absurdly short on detail. The prosecution claims that there was an official from Ukraine’s Security Service who, between 1 March and 31 May 2023 “created and headed a terrorist organization in order to carry out acts of terrorism” in occupied Donetsk oblast (the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’]. The prosecution could not say who this supposed SBU officer was, nor when he allegedly created the so-called “terrorist organization”. This almost certainly means that any claim that the unidentified ‘official’ recruited Karpenko into the alleged organization is either pulled out of the air or, more likely, based on ‘testimony’ extracted from Karpenko under torture. Although it is claimed that the components of the homemade explosive device were to be used “for an act of terrorism”, no details of such plans are given, nor how Karpenko was supposed to know. The 25-year sentence is for having allegedly received and followed an instruction from the unidentified SBU official at some unspecified time between 1 and 21 April 2024 and, while living at his home in Mariupol, removed components of an explosive device from one hiding place, divided them into two equal parts and hid them again, in two different hiding places.
Russian ‘investigators’ took this alleged division of one store of components for an explosive device into two, and despite the lack of any real detail, claimed that it constituted a formidable array of charges. Karpenko was accused of ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code; in abetting a crime falling under Russia’s terrorism legislation (Article 205.1 § 3); involvement in a terrorist organization (Article 205.4 § 2) and the illegal purchase, transfer, sale, possession, etc. of explosive devices or substances, carried out as part of an organized gang (Article 222.1 § 4).
Karpenko was on trial before ‘judge’ Arslan Ivanovich Zhaginov from the Southern District Military Court, an individual who has already taken part in other political trials of Ukrainians (Oksana Ptakhina; Serhiy Tubolets, others). There were enough hearings to suggest that Karpenko rejected at least part of the charges. Karpenko was sentenced on 8 September 2026 to 25 years, with the first five years’ imprisonment to be in a prison, the harshest of Russia’s penal institutions; the remainder in a maximum-security prison colony. A large 650,000 rouble fine was also imposed.
It is not known when Karpenko was taken prisoner, except that it was after 21 April 2024. Given the lack of any information, it seems very likely that Karpenko was held incommunicado, without any official status and without independent legal representation for a very long time, conceivably until 18 November 2025 when the indictment was passed to the Southern District Military Court.
