Sentences of up to 22 years are guaranteed from politically compliant ‘judges’, but the Ukrainians demolished all of Russia’s lies about their ‘trial’ and about its war crimes against Ukrainian civilians
Azov ’trial’ defendants Photo Aleksandra Astakhova, Mediazona
Azov ’trial’ defendants Photo Aleksandra Astakhova, Mediazona
Russia’s most notorious show trial of 24 Ukrainian prisoners of war accused of ‘trying to violently overthrow the regime’ by serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces ‘Azov’ Regiment is coming to an end, with the Russian prosecutor having demanded monstrous 18-22-year sentences. This is despite totally insane charges which were laid against them in violation of international law and on the basis of a politically motivated ruling passed after they were taken prisoner.
All of this, and more, was highlighted in court on 19 March 2025, when several defendants gave blistering final addresses. These not only demolished any arguments for the charges against each of them individually, but also pointed to the absurdity of claiming that Ukrainians living in their own country were ‘violently trying to seize power’ and to the real terrorism, for example, in Russia’s bombing of Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital and other hospitals, schools, etc. While there are no grounds for believing that their words, and the evident absurdity of the charges against them, will have any impact on presiding ‘judge’ Viacheslav Alekseevich Korsakov and two colleagues from the Southern District Military Court, there is also no possibility that these individuals were not aware of the travesty in which they are complicit.
As reported, it became clear at the first hearing on 15 June 2023 that there were to be 22 defendants, and not 24, with two prisoners of war - David Kasatkin and Dmytro Lablinsky – having been released in an exchange of prisoners. All of the prisoners, including nine women, had been imprisoned since the Spring of 2022. This is of critical importance given that the charges pertained solely to their service, at various times, in the Azov Regiment, which is part of Ukraine’s Armed Forces. The Russian supreme court’s ruling on 2 August 2022 which declared the Azov Regiment to be a ‘terrorist’ organization was widely seen as a pretext for persecuting Ukrainian prisoners of war. It has, indeed, been used for this purpose ever since with Russia paying no heed even to the fundamental principle that the law is not retrospective. Literally all of the defendants, including the nine women who had served only as cooks, were charged with some or all of the following: ‘actions aimed at the violent seizure of power or violent change in the constitutional order of the Russian Federation’ (Articles 278 and 35 § 4 of Russia’s criminal code); ‘organizing the activities of a terrorist organization or participation in it (Article 205.5 § 1 or 2) and (against 11 men) ‘undertaking training for the purpose of carrying out terrorist activities’ (Article 205.3).
The nine women prisoners were freed in an exchange in September 2024, with this after another male prisoner of war, 55-year-old Oleksandr Ishchenko died of injuries, probably inflicted while he was being subjected to torture.
The cynical absurdity of all these charges is clear from Mediazona’s transcript of four remaining defendants’ final addresses’.
Oleksandr Mukhin served in the Azov Regiment from September 2017 through November 2018, with the end of his service almost four years before the ruling claiming Azov to be ‘terrorist’. This has not stopped the prosecutor from demanding a 22-year sentence. Mukhin concentrated on the mind-blowing insanity of claiming that a soldier in Ukraine’s Armed Forces was a ‘terrorist’ and that he had been trained to ‘commit terrorist acts’. He had no idea how to commit acts of terrorism, had never tried, nor had he ever been trained to do so. The claim that he had planned ‘to overthrow the regime’ was especially surreal. Mukhin also pointed out that, at the time he served in the Armed Forces, Russia was not even denying that the territory in question was part of Ukraine. Russia’s annexation of it also post-dated his imprisonment. So which regime was he supposed to be trying to overthrow, and how?
Both he and Mykyta Timonin pointed to the fact that the Azov unit’s immediate commander had been sentenced by Russia to 24 years, but without the surreal charge that he had sought to ‘violently overthrow the regime’. So how, exactly, were they planning to do this without the involvement of their immediate superior?
He had long left military service when seized by the Russian invaders of his home in Mariupol on 20 or 21 March 2022. This is a totally fabricated case, he says, in which no proof at all is required, just the four letters of the word ‘Azov’.
Oleh Zharkov is facing a 19.5-year sentence although he worked as a handyman. In the moving beginning of his address, he pointed out that there were, indeed, four men who had defended their Homeland. “They are soldiers; were dedicated to their duty, their oath. I am grateful to them for this because it is thanks to them and thousands of other such people who came out in defence of our country that my wife, with whom I have lived 30 years, and my son who is 12, will be able to return home. And my son [will be able to] go to school where he studied before the war. And the flag of Ukraine will be raised above that school and they will begin with Ukraine’s national anthem …”
Zharkov pointed out to the supposed ‘investigator’ that many of those who were, like him, civilians carrying out civilian tasks had got through Russia’s so-called ‘filtration’ checks. The ‘investigator’ responded, saying: “You understand, bro, there are no innocent people. It’s just that if you are at liberty, that’s not because you’ve deserved it, but that we’ve been remiss.”
In other words, Zharkov says, they just grabbed people on the street. “As the saying goes, if you have a person, you can find a charge.”
Anatoliy Hrytsyk was a military man, who served in several peacekeeping missions abroad. He had retired from service in 2008, but later served in Azov from 2015 to 2019.
“You know, I have understood just one thing: I can’t tell people what I’m feeling, what I went through; how your country behaved to mine; how you treated my home. How you shot my wife on the road, before my eyes. How ‘liberators’ burst into my home, grabbed everything to the last item, how they imprisoned me for three years, this is the fourth.”
He will not continue, he says, as he knows that you can’t understand if you have not been through what he endured, and he wouldn’t wish it on anybody. He does end, however, in saying: “as a citizen of my country, as an officer and as a person, I am certain of one thing. My conscience is clear and I am proud of that.”
Mykyta Timonin is one of the few actual prisoners of war, as he was serving in Azov when taken prisoner. The prosecution has demanded a 22-year sentence.
Timonin pointed to the constant use of terms about Ukrainians that Russia is using to justify its aggression, the claims that they are ‘fascists’ Nazis, terrorists, Ukrainian nationalists, etc. “I’d like to draw a small analogy: on 22 June 1941 at 4 a.m., Nazi German invaded the USSR. On 24 February 2022, all of Ukraine was woken by Russian missiles. It was not Ukraine who attacked Russia, it was not we who came, armed, to a foreign country.
We defended our land, our cities. The Russian army entered Mariupol in tanks …”
They invaded our land, he continues, then claim that it was we who wanted to overthrow the regime.
Timonin also drew attention to “a few facts” he charitably suggested were “not known to everybody”. These included Russia’s bombing on 8 July 2024 of Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital Okhmatdyt, and numerous other attacks on hospitals, kindergartens and other civilian targets. He notes the Russian mantra, that it only targets military sites, and lists in response, the number of civilian targets in his native Kharkiv oblast that Russia has hit. These include the palace of culture in Lozova; the History Museum in Kharkiv, as well as the palace of sport; a market and a shopping centre in Kyiv. He says that the list can be continued, and it is, indeed, very long.
With respect to Russian claims about supposed ‘terrorism’ and ‘atrocities’ from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Timonin mentions what he has been forced to witness while imprisoned. “I saw bags over people’s heads; electric wires attached to different parts of the body; broken ribs; kidneys beaten out; people beaten to death; hunger for more than a year; no medical care; people, their arms and legs rotting; fleas; bedbugs; a shower twice a year, and we left, not only dirtier than when we arrived, but also beaten. We’re not able to speak with our families and friends. Even now we send letters, and they don’t reach them and get lost somewhere. “ This, he notes, is while Russian leader Vladimir Putin is claiming that Russia is treating all prisoners of war ‘humanely’.