Russia has long used and tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war to try to rewrite the facts about its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is now using particularly cynical claims about men seized in Kursk oblast
Ukrainian POWs forced to enter the cage and sit like this during the ’trial’ Screenshot from Russian Investigative committee video
Ukrainian POWs forced to enter the cage and sit like this during the ’trial’ Screenshot from Russian Investigative committee video
Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s demand on 12 March that Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner in Kursk oblast should be “treated as terrorists, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation” was widely reported by the international media. Unfortunately, few, if any, journalists bothered to factcheck a supposed threat that was nothing of the kind, since Russia has been fabricating ‘terrorism’ charges against Ukrainian prisoners of war for at least two years. A considerable number of the huge sentences passed have, in fact, been based on rulings clearly handed down after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in order to justify such illegal prosecutions.
Prisoners of war have protected status under the Geneva Conventions which prohibit their prosecution merely for carrying out their military duties. While nobody is protected from prosecution for war crimes, the latter must be proven with the defendant enjoying fundamental principles of a fair trial. Both the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine and the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine have found that Russia is guilty of systematic and widespread torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. This is of particular importance as the only ‘evidence’ of any alleged crimes almost invariably comes from ‘confessions’ which Ukrainian prisoners of war, denied any access to independent lawyers or contact with their families, have clearly been given under torture.
In August 2022, Russia’s increasingly politicized Supreme court, declared the Azov Regiment, which is part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, ‘a terrorist organization’. It was clear then that the ruling was aimed at concocting ‘terrorism’ trials against Ukrainian defenders, taken prisoner after their defence of Mariupol.
‘Terrorism’ trials against members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Aidar Battalion are equally cynical. Russia calls this Battalion ‘the Aidar terrorist society’, with Russia’s FSB even adding the Battalion to its register of organizations which have been declared ‘terrorist’, purportedly in accordance with Russian legislation. It is telling that the ruling labelling Aidar ‘terrorist’ was passed, on 25 September 2023, by Russia’s Southern District Military Court. It is this court which is, in parallel, handing down huge sentences against Ukrainian prisoners of war from Aidar or Azov. Many Ukrainian prisoners of war have been sentenced to huge terms of imprisonment, from 20 years to life, with the soldiers’ military training claimed to be ‘training to commit terrorist activities’ under Article 205.3 of Russia’s criminal code. Military duties are, in turn, treated as ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’, under Article 205.4 § 2.
It should be stressed that these ‘trials’ and sentences are initiated by an aggressor state illegally applying its legislation on Ukrainian citizens seized while defending their Ukrainian homeland. Examples here: Russia churns out surreal ‘terrorism’ sentences against Ukrainian POWs for defending Ukraine
Kursk oblast
The Ukrainian Armed Forces began an incursion into Russia’s Kursk oblast at the beginning of August 2024. The aims of the offensive were, among other goals, to divert Russian forces from Donbas; to hamper Russian supply lines and to put pressure on Moscow. One of the immediate results was an increase in the number of prisoner exchanges. Ukraine officially stated that it had no intention of annexing this Russian territory and cited Article 51 of the UN Statute, saying that it was trying to create a buffer zone on Russian territory to help prevent Russia’s constant shelling of Ukrainian civilian targets.
The offensive was always high-risk, in particular for Ukrainian soldiers, and there have been horrific cases where Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered were summarily executed. It is likely that the treatment of those Ukrainians held in Russian captivity is especially savage, with this largely seen in the videos shown of such POWs, supposedly ‘on trial’.
The methods used are abundantly clear from the video posted on 14 March 2025 by Russia’s Investigative Committee. Two days after Putin’s demand for ‘terrorism trials’, the IC reported that long sentences had been passed against four Ukrainian soldiers. All four are forced to enter the defendants’ cage totally crouched over, and then to each ‘admit’ to the charges in a manner more akin to confirming their names during a military drill than ‘confessing’ to supposed crimes.
The text makes no mention of the fact that these are clearly prisoners of war, and instead labels them “Ukrainian fighters of Ukraine’s Armed Formations” Volodymyr Odnorochko; Serhiy Pohromsky; and Mykola Tiazhkorob were sentenced to 16 years’ maximum-security imprisonment with the first three years in a prison, the worst of Russia’s penal institutions. Oleksandr Plaksyvy was sentenced to 15 years, but with the same three years in a prison.
All four soldiers from Ukraine’s Armed Forces’ Sixth Separate Mechanized Steppe Brigade were charged with ‘terrorist acts in Kursk oblast, carried out by a group of people by prior conspiracy and with grave consequences пп. «а», «в» ч. 2 ст. 205 УК РФ.
Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the aggressor state claims that the four Ukrainians, in August 2024, “in order to carry out a terrorist act, as part of a unit of the Ukrainian armed formations [sic] While it is more than likely that they fired to kill at the Russian soldiers who were trying to kill them, the claims that they occupied private homes, prevented civilians from evacuating and fired at them would need to be proven. Instead, we see Ukrainian POWs treated in a humiliating fashion and almost certainly giving ‘confessions’ under duress, and nothing else. There is nothing to indicate whether there was more than one ‘court hearing’ and it seems extremely unlikely that they had independent lawyers.
The ‘Investigative committee’ reported two other sentences on 14 March, with the same degrading treatment and unconvincing ‘admission of guilt’ to identical ‘terrorism’ charges against Andriy Anisimov and Dmytro Labunsky. Both men were sentenced to 16 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the first three years in a prison.
On 6 March, both the IC and Russia’s prosecutor general reported four 17-year maximum-security sentences (with three years in a prison) against Ivan Furlet; Yuriy Zadorozhny; Yuriy Sychenko; and Yuriy Khaiuk. They too were accused of “illegally invading’ Kursk oblast, with the same charges as above. These are just some of the prisoners of war against whom Russia is planning such ‘trials’.
Any ‘directive’ from leader Putin leads to a flurry of activity from enforcement bodies, and his words about ‘terrorism’ on 12 March 2025 were no exception. By 14 March, the Investigative Committee had not only reported sentences on ‘terrorism’ charges against six Ukrainian POWs, supposedly after two separate ‘trials’, but also announced other ‘terrorist’ charges.
Two ‘investigations’ had supposedly been initiated. In one case, Ukrainian soldiers were claimed to have shelled civilians in Sudzha who were trying to flee in their own cars; to have tortured, and then killed a civilian; and to have killed three Russian soldiers taken prisoner, having subjected them to brutal torture. In the other, they are alleged to have shelled a museum, causing one death and the destruction of the museum itself.
All of the above are among the crimes which Russian soldiers are known – from video and photographic evidence, witness testimony, and International Criminal Court investigations – to have committed in Bucha, Mariupol, Izium and other cities under Russian occupation or Russian attack. Russia began using Ukrainian prisoners of war to try to rewrite the historical facts around its savage bombing and blockade of Mariupol in 2022, and is now using similar methods with Ukrainian prisoners of war held incommunicado and without any access to proper lawyers in Kursk oblast. There is nothing to corroborate such stories but ‘confessions’ from men totally under FSB control and Russia’s propaganda media.