Vitaliy Chorny from Yalta in occupied Crimea has become the latest of Russia’s very many Ukrainians sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for supposed ‘Crimean ‘terrorist plots’. The FSB claimed to have ‘thwarted’ the first alleged ‘plot’ just months after Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, and many elements remain unchanged to this day. The number of such ‘trials’ has, however, risen exponentially since 24 February 2022, together with the size of the sentence. A key reason for the higher sentences is that ‘treason’ is usually thrown in with other charges. That, in turn, means that all hearings are held behind closed doors with no way of scrutinizing the indictment and any ‘evidence’ provided.
According to the ‘If there were no war’ project, Vitaliy Vladyslavovych Chorny (b. 11 July 1989) is a musician – a songwriter and performer, originally from Kharkiv oblast. Judging by the indictment, repeated in connection to the sentence passed, he has been in Russian captivity since 15 April 2024.
It is not, however, clear how long he was held incommunicado and without official charges, with the FSB in occupied Crimea typically using such periods where a person has no formal status to try to extract ‘confessions’ or testimony through physical torture or threats.
Charges had been laid by 11 January 2025 as it was then that the indictment was passed to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov (Russia). Chorny was charged with ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code; with ‘training in terrorist activities’ (Article 205.3) and with explosives charges under Articles 222.1 § 1 and 223.1 § 1. He had already been added to Russia’s so-called ‘register of terrorists and extremists’ by 17 July 2025, well over a year before being convicted of the charges.
In announcing the 22-year sentence on 21 September 2026, the Southern District Military Court claimed it to have been established that in February and the beginning of March 2024, Chorny had, via correspondence and conversations on a messenger app, established contact with an officer of Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU]. The aggressor state, which invaded Chorny’s country, claimed that Chorny had “confirmed his willingness to carry out active measures on Russian territory [sic] directed against the security of the Russian Federation. He had also agreed to provide other home to a foreign state and its representatives, i.e. officers of SBU.
On 11 and 12 March 2024, he allegedly received instructions from the SBU officials to obtain explosive devices and other components, and to use them to prepare a homemade explosive device which should be put in a hiding place in Crimea for later use by Ukrainian Military Intelligence. He purportedly also received text messages and a link to a video containing instructions on preparing a remote-control explosive device, on using it to carry out an explosion. From 12 March to 15 April 2024, he is claimed to have obtained the explosive device and components for it and to have taken it to his apartment which he kept it, awaiting instructions from the SBU, until Russian occupation ‘enforcement officers’ turned up on 15 April.
The very specific timing could possibly mean that this was some kind of FSB set-up, with this also explaining why the indictment ducks such obvious questions as how, Chorny “obtained” an explosive device, and very quickly.
Given the number of hearings, it seems likely that Chorny rejected either all or some of the charges. Not that this makes any difference with not one acquittal having been reported in any of these cases involving allegations of ‘treason’.
The case was ‘heard’ by ‘judge’ Sergei Mikhailovych Gorielov who has been involved in many political trials against Ukrainians, including the recent sentences against four men abducted from occupied Melitopol and tortured. His sentence on 21 September 2026, as well as those against the Melitopol men, were enormous, with this undoubtedly because of effective instructions ‘from above’. Vitaliy Chorny was sentenced to 22 years’ maximum-security imprisonment with the first five years in a prison, the harshest of Russian penal institutions. A fine of 250 thousand roubles was also passed.
Although information is limited, the Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project saw grounds for suspecting the prosecution to be politically motivated and adding Chorny to its list of ‘Other victims of political repression’. The charges should, under any circumstances, arouse concern and not only because Russia, as occupying state, is prohibited by international humanitarian law from applying its legislation on occupied territory and from forcibly taking Ukrainian citizens to Russia. The latter has, at least since 2022, been aggressively trying to claim that Ukrainians defending their country are ‘terrorists’ and that they are ‘members of a terrorist organization’ created by Ukraine’s SBU. This is evident nonsense, as is the claim that Ukrainian citizens, who are essentially given no choice but to taken Russian citizenship, “committed treason” against the invader if they support actions which would almost certainly be directed against the Russian invaders and, perhaps, collaborators serving the enemy.
