The Russian occupation ‘Crimean high court’ has sentenced 46-year-old Oksana Kravchenko to a horrific 20-year term of imprisonment on supposed ‘treason’ charges Although Russia concealed her whereabouts for a year and then all details about her ‘trial’, including the lack of almost any hearings, information has come to light about the shocking coercion used to force her into signing whatever ‘confession’ was thrust in front of her.
The sentence was announced on 24 September by the occupation ‘prosecutor’ with Kravchenko identified as a 46-year-old resident of Simferopol. She had, the report said, been convicted of ‘state treason’ and of ‘getting an underage person involved in committing a crime’. Although the latter charge could fall under Article 155 of Russia’s criminal code, the scant information previously available suggested that Oksana Kravchenko (b. 11.03.1980) was charged solely with ‘treason’, under Article 275. It was claimed that she had contacted a representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence and that, in 2023 while manager of one of the hotels in Simferopol, had photographed documents confirming the identity of Russian military personnel. She was also accused of having engaged her son, who was born in 2010, to supposedly “carry out a crime” by photographing the place where an anti-aircraft system was located. Kravchenko was alleged to have passed all of this information on to “a representative of a foreign state [sic]” via an Internet messenger.
The sentence was savage: 20 years’ imprisonment in a medium-security prison colony (the harshest penal institution available for woman prisoners), with a further two years’ restricted liberty, as well as a 100 thousand rouble fine.
The sentence was passed by ‘judge’ Alla Khinkevych, a Ukrainian turncoat who has herself been sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court to 14 years for betraying her oath and serving the Russian invaders from 2014. Khinkeyvch was responsible for several shocking sentences reported earlier, including the 19-year sentence against Lenur Islyamov; the 18-year sentence against Charaz Akimov and others. Crimean Process notes that Khinkevych has become the most actively involved in ‘treason trials’. She was responsible for 11 sentences over the past year on ‘treason’ charges with six already since the beginning of 2026.
The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project and ‘If there were no war’ Project earlier reported that Oksana Krachenko, then 45, had been abducted on 2 April 2025. Over the next year, she was held incommunicado in SIZO No. 2, the notorious remand prison opened soon after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The SIZO is believed to be under the control of Russia’s FSB who use it to hold people seized on political charges, almost always incommunicado, with the lack of any official status leaving the FSB free to use torture and other illegal forms of duress to extract ‘confessions’.
It was only in April 2026 that the above charges of ‘treason’ and ‘drawing an underage person into crime’ were laid and Kravchenko moved to SIZO No. 1. It was almost certainly after this that Kravchenko was able to pass on information that the ‘investigation’ had also been in respect of her son, Sviatoslav. In 2023, he was only 12 and, being less able to foresee the consequences, had sent her “an interesting photo”. Despite being clearly underage, he was hauled off to interrogation and so-called ‘investigative activities’ without his father or adult sister being present.
In November 2025, Oksana Kravchenko was taken to the FSB building in handcuffs and with a bag over her head, The FSB threatened to imprison her son over the video sent when he was just 12. She explains that she signed everything that was demanded of her without even reading it, with this scarcely possible as they did not remove the bag over her head.
Then on 2 April 2026, Oksana was again taken to the FSB. She recounts that the ‘lawyer’ appointed for her told her that if she did not dispute the charge, she would get a 15-year sentence. If not, she would get 20 years and her son would also be imprisoned. It was only after this that she was “defrosted” – the term the FSB uses for when it stops holding a person incommunicado and ‘working on them’, and officially lays charges. In further confirmation of the chilling uses that the FSB are making of SIZO No, 2, the ‘defrosting’ involved her being transferred to SIZO No. 1. The latter is also full of Russia’s political prisoners, but they do, at least, have formal status, and can usually communicate, if only though letters that pass by a censor, with their family.
2 апреля 2026 года Кравченко снова привезли в ФСБ. По её словам, адвокат по назначению сказала, что, если она согласится с обвинением, то ей дадут 15 лет, а если нет — то 20 лет и сына тоже посадят. Затем женщину «разморозили» — перевели в СИЗО-1.
Everything in this case was secret, including, illegally, even the hearing at which the sentence was announced. Given the threat against Oksana’s son, who is still only 16, and the fact that there were only three ‘hearings’ in all, it seems unlikely that she did reject the charges. That did not stop Khinkevych from passing a truly monstrous 20-year sentence.
