“If you stand trial and plead guilty, you will be exchanged”. Framed-up ‘terrorism’ cases for Ukrainian servicemen in Russia

18 years of strict regime

“On February 13, I lost contact with him,” his girlfriend, Yuliia, tells hromadske about Oleksandr. “We had talked before, and the conversation was a little tense, and I couldn't understand why. He didn't tell me that he was going to the combat missions. And then I saw him in the interrogation videos of the Russians, where they abused him. They asked him who he was and where he was from.”

Oleksandr Harnaha is a lawyer. He signed a contract with the Armed Forces of Ukraine before the start of the full-scale war and was a legal adviser. In February 2022, he was transferred to a combat position. After being injured in November 2023 and undergoing long treatment, the soldier with the call sign Robokop returned to the army — he was transferred to the 118th Battalion, which was undergoing recuperation in Volyn.

In the winter of 2024, Oleksandr was transferred to the Third Assault Brigade, where he served as a company commander. But he didn't stay there long — in a little over two weeks he was taken prisoner by Russia near Avdiivka. As the soldier would later tell his family in a letter, he was captured when he was unconscious due to a blast.

The video of the interrogation shows threats like “We're going to cut off your ears”. During the interrogation, his arms are twisted behind his back, he is unable to stand. He asks: “Can I at least lean on the wall?”. He is not allowed to. He falls down and is picked up.Yuliia, Oleksandr Harnaha's girlfriend

As the family managed to find out, after the interrogations, the prisoner was transferred to the Rostov detention center for the period of “investigation”. When the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don “found” Oleksandr guilty under the article on “terrorism”, the serviceman was sent to serve his sentence of 18 years in high security to the detention center No. 2 in Taganrog. This place is known as one of the most brutal Russian torture chambers. Most Azov fighters are held there.

Why “terrorism”?

Russians pass “sentences” on Ukrainian fighters in several categories of cases. Some are accused of “violating the laws and customs of war”, i.e. war crimes. Most of these cases are heard in occupied Donetsk. Instead, the Azov fighters are accused of “terrorism” and their cases are being considered in Rostov-on-Don.

“On August 2, 2022, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation recognized Azov unit as a terrorist organization, and accordingly, banned its activities in Russia. And Russia is now ‘extending’ its laws to the occupied territories of Ukraine. Accordingly, they are considering more than a hundred cases of Azov members who are in captivity. And these are separate cases and separate trials for each of them,” explains Tetiana Katrychenko, executive director of the Media Initiative for Human Rights.

Russians associate the Third Separate Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces with Azov unit. This is probably due to the similarity of the principles of work and the fact that the brigade's commander is Andrii Biletskyi, the founder of the Azov regiment. Therefore, the captured soldiers of the Third Brigade, as well as the Azov members, are being “tried” by the Russians under the article on terrorism.

According to the data obtained by hromadske from the Coordination Headquarters, in almost three years of the great war, cases have been opened or “sentences” have been passed against 47 Ukrainian servicemen under this article.

“If we are talking about the article “Terrorism”, it is actually They are allegedly being tried for being current or former members of a separate unit that has been “recognized as a terrorist organization”. Such trials are a violation of international law and a war crime, as military personnel cannot be tried for their mere participation in war.for participation in the war,” notes Tetiana Katrychenko.

At least 38 “verdicts” under Article 205.3 (“Training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities”), which also applied to Oleksandr Harnaha, were passed by a court in Rostov. According to Russian law, the punishment is imprisonment for a term of 10 to 20 years or life sentence.

Most of the “sentences” found by hromadske concern Azov fighters or members of the Third Assault Brigade. The most recent sentence, handed down on November 19, 2024, concerns 27-year-old Yevhen Kapustian, who, according to Russian military resources, fought as part of the Azov regiment.

“In general, civilians are also charged for ‘terrorism’, because for the Russian imitation of the judicial system, it doesn't matter what case you frame up. There are no rules or logic involved,” Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, told hromadske.

For example, the list includes a resident of Berdiansk, Dmytro Kravtsov, a civilian who collected and transmitted information about those in Berdiansk who supported the actions of the Russian Federation in 2022, according to the Russian special services. He was sentenced to 15 years in a strict regime colony.

If you have money, you get letters

Despite the blatant violation of all international norms on the detention of prisoners of war, Russia is trying to pretend that it is conducting trials according to the established rules. Therefore, each suspect is assigned a free lawyer.

“Obviously, every prisoner is put under a lot of pressure to plead guilty. They are told: ‘We're going to get through this trial quickly, it's not important at all. You will be quickly convicted and transferred for exchange’,” Tetiana Katrychenko told hromadske.

Yevhen Smirnov, a lawyer with the Russian human rights organization The Russian organization “First Department” specializes in trials held in closed sessions and the defense of defendants in criminal cases of treason, espionage, extremism, etc. On March 29, 2024, the Russian Ministry of Justice added the organization to the register of “foreign agents”.First Department, told hromadske that the defense lawyers appointed by Russia to Ukrainians are mostly unwilling to help their clients. They are “like a decoration during investigations and trials”. Smirnov also spoke about cases when prisoners were assigned lawyers paid by the FSB whose role is to simplify the work of the investigator.

Other times, lawyers are found “by agreement” by relatives of prisoners of war or by the prisoners themselves, as in the case of Oleksandr Harnaha.

“Sania managed to find a Russian lawyer. One of the guys who was in the cell with him had a lawyer, and they managed to send a note to his mother through her. They persuaded this lawyer to conduct his trial,” said Yuliia, Oleksandr's girlfriend.

“In this situation, the lawyer can provide them with legal assistance within the framework of the criminal case: participate in investigative actions, interrogations, collect some information,” says Yevhen Smirnov.

It is useless to count on acquittal in court with the help of even hired lawyers. The main function of defense lawyers in such cases is “palliative”. They say that prisoners who have lawyers are less likely to be tortured. They also establish communication with the outside world and the Ukrainian authorities so that they can work on the exchange process. But these lawyers will have to be paid.

There were several hearings, this sham trial took place. Sania then started writing to me through his lawyer, and we started to communicate a bit. She sent notes, but also for money. One visit and one note cost two thousand hryvnias.Yuliia, Oleksandr Harnaha's girlfriend

After the trial was over, the lawyer disappeared, Yuliia says. Although she is officially still there, she never got in touch.

“She promised that she would accompany him wherever he was and pass notes from him. But she lied. The trial is over, and I haven't heard from her since,” says Oleksandr's girlfriend.

“Truth” or death

For Russia, it is important to recognize the guilt of prisoners of war in the crimes they are charged with. According to Tetiana Katrychenko, Executive Director of the MIHR, Russia “collects all these confessions, and it is beneficial for it to have guilty verdicts” in order to shift the blame for the destruction of cities to the Defense Forces. She says, it mostly concerns the defenders of Mariupol.

To obtain such “confessions”, Russians resort to torture. In the story of Oleksandr Harnaha, his mother and lawyer urged the soldier to appeal so that he could stay a little longer in the Rostov detention center, where the conditions were better. However, he refused.

“Then they explained to me why. If he had filed for a review, he would have been in trouble,” says Oleksandr Harnaha's girlfriend.

The Russians also used violence to extract the soldier's testimony and complaints about his brigade, which were recorded on video. According to Yuliia, in one of his letters, Oleksandr explicitly said that he was doing this under threats. He asked that Ukraine know that he was not a traitor.

There were people in the brigade who believed that he was a traitor, who said that “it was better for him to be there and not come back” ... One of his good friends, with whom we spent so much time together in all kinds of conversations, said: “So what? If he didn't want to, he wouldn’t have told them anything.”Yuliia, Oleksandr Harnaha's girlfriend

hromadske tried to get the position of the Third Assault Brigade, in which Oleksandr Harnaha served, but they did not respond to a request for comment.

According to human rights activist Liudmyla Huseinova, a survivor of Russian captivity, society has no right to condemn soldiers who appear in Russian videos.

“Very often, people are forced to give interviews, and a machine gunner is standing next to them. The person does not know whether they will finish their speech or not. These people... They are going through terrible things. We have no moral right to stick the knife into them. The time will come and we will find out who was there for what reason and what they said,” the human rights activist told hromadske.

The Executive Director of the MIHR confirms that the released prisoners of war are saying that they underwent tortures, under which people “can either participate in such videos, or admit their guilt, or take the blame for actions they did not commit”.

Does this affect the exchange process? For Ukraine, it does not, the MIHR and the Coordination Headquarters assure. It is clear that in captivity, Ukrainians act under duress, and their lives are under threat.

Therefore, everything they say in the propaganda videos does not matter. The only positive thing is the fact that [thanks to such videos we know that] the person is alive and is in captivity.Petro Yatsenko, representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War

Oleksandr Harnaha's girlfriend suggests that the Russians themselves will not be in a hurry to give him up for exchange, as they have produced enough content with him that they periodically pass off as new.

The silence has been broken

“I need to have the bullet removed out of my arm when I get back,” read one of Oleksandr Harnaha's letters.

Writing from Taganrog, he noted about himself: “I am healthy in body and mind, but very, very tired.”

Now the family has lost contact with Oleksandr — as they learned, on the eve of the new year, his “sentence” came into force, and the prisoner was sent to “serve his sentence” in a high-security colony.

According to the Coordination Headquarters, since the beginning of the full-scale war and as of December 20, Ukraine has managed to return 10 soldiers illegally convicted in Russia for “terrorism” or soldiers who were still under investigation under this article. Another 37 such soldiers remained in captivity.

Is it more difficult to return such prisoners? Tetiana Katrychenko says it is too early to analyze this. Until September 2024, only a few returned with sentences. In the fall several dozen servicemen were returned at once, including those sentenced to life imprisonment.

Some of the defenders who received “sentences” in Russia returned during the exchange on October 18. This is the first case that the Coordination Center has publicly reported.

Because of the publicity, relatives think that now their loved ones are unlikely to be included in the exchanges. As it turned out, the condition for previous exchanges of prisoners of war with “sentences” was silence. But the Coordination Center, in particular, violated it.Tetiana Katrychenko, executive director of the Media Initiative for Human Rights

The so-called court verdict is not an obstacle to the return of military personnel or civilians home, Petro Yatsenko, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters, told hromadske.

“If the so-called investigation is still ongoing, it may slow down the return process, but those who are under fake ‘investigation’ can expect to be exchanged and returned. We also have such released prisoners,” he added.