Little is known about 47-year-old Petro Zhytsky, however the speed of the FSB arrest and the claims of 'irrefutable evidence' based on his 'confession' while held incommunicado are disturbingly familiar
Petro Zhytsky Screenshot from the video
Petro Zhytsky Screenshot from the video
Russia’s Southern District Military Court in Rostov has sentenced 47-year-old Petro Zhytsky from Yalta to 24 years’ imprisonment, claiming involvement in a purported assassination attempt on Oleh Tsaryov. Described by the FSB and Russian propaganda media as a ‘public figure’, Tsaryov is a former Ukrainian MP, facing at least two long sentences in Ukraine and under international sanctions for his active support of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine since 2014. With virtually all available information coming from the FSB and a court notorious for politically motivated sentences, there is little chance of fully assessing the charges. The latter are, in any case, illegal since Russia as occupying state is not allowed to apply its legislation on occupied territory. Many aspects of the indictment also mirror a whole series of such cases involving real or purportedly ‘thwarted’ attempts against the lives of Moscow-installed Russian officials or collaborators.
There were reports at the time that Tsarov had been shot during the night from 27-28 October 2023 in occupied Crimea, although he survived this apparent attack. By 31 October, the FSB were, reportedly, claiming to have arrested a Crimean who had supposedly “organized the attack”. They asserted that the person, clearly Zhytsky, had ‘confessed’, with this presumably what was meant by the allegedly irrefutable evidence of Ukrainian Security Service [SBU] involvement.
The FSB know how to extract such ‘confessions’, with few, if any, able to continue refusing to give them when electric wires attached to genitals, fingertips, etc. are used to send agonizingly painful currents through the body. It does seem telling that Zhytsky was never actually claimed to be the perpetrator, nor do there seem to have been related arrests. His seizure, however , made it possible both for the FSB to look as though they were doing something, and to claim that Ukraine’s SBU were behind the attack. A flurry of activity and supposed ‘progress’ was doubtless also linked with the fact that Aleksandr Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee and a close crony of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, had demanded an investigation.
The indictment against Zhytsky was passed to the Southern District Military Court in August 2024, with the ‘trial’ before ‘judge’ Aleksander Vasilievich Generalov, who has taken part in many so-called ‘trials’ of Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian political prisoners.
There were a few hearings which may mean that Zhytsky retracted his ‘confession’, or that he, at least, had finally received some legal assistance. The FSB typically obtain ‘confessions’ while a person is held incommunicado, without any procedural status and without a proper lawyer.
The prosecution had finally come up with several charges, all under Russia’s criminal code. Zhytsky was accused of ‘state treason’ (Article 276); of an attempt on the life of a public figure (Article 277); of training in order to carry out terrorist activities (Article 205.3); of iegal circulation and preparation of explosives by an organized group and of illegal circulation of a firearm (Article 222.1 § 4; 223.1 § 3; and 222 § 4),
The court press service claimed as established that, from 24 February to 1 December 2022, the SBU had formed a group of people to carry out “crimes” linked with the circulation, preparation, etc. of firearms, ammunition and explosives, as well as to carry out an attack on Tsaryov.
According to the prosecution, Zhytsky had, “from October to November 2022, used coordinates received from the SBU, arrived at a secret hiding place, from which he took out weapons and means of carrying out the planned crime.”
It is not at all clear why, according to this version, Zhytsky would have taken the risk of removing weapons from a hiding place, transporting these and keeping them at his home in order to give them to others for them to carry out an attack. He is also supposed to have kept Tsaryov under surveillance from 1 December 2022 to 26 October 2023 and in May-June 2023, determined a possible place for the attack on Tsaryov. He was also accused of having taken a detonator and explosives out of a secret hiding place and illegally held these in order to make a homemade bomb. The alleged ‘training on carrying out terrorist activities’ is supposed to have taken place in parallel with the above.
The claim was that those “representatives of a foreign security service” carried out the attack using the information provided by Zhytsky.
The court statement asserts that Tsaryov was not injured, because he resisted and then managed to escape.
On 11 March 2025, Generalov sentenced the 47-year-old Ukrainian to 24 years’ maximum-security [‘harsh-regime’] imprisonment with the first five years to be in a prison, the harshest of all Russian penal institutions. He also imposed a steep 800 thousand rouble fine.
The sentence is not final and can be appealed. Unfortunately, no appeals against such sentences involving Crimean Tatar or other Ukrainian political prisoners have resulted in more than a very mirror reduction in the size of the sentence. Even if the charges were warranted, the sentence would still be monstrous and far greater than those passed against Russians suspected of real killings and other crimes.