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Russia’s most savage sentence yet against 66-year-old Ukrainian woman from occupied Crimea

The indictment seems copied verbatim from other such fabricated ‘trials’ of Ukrainians, but this time Russia is planning to imprison Nina Tymoshenko until she is 82

Nina Tymoshenko in ’court’

A Crimean occupation ‘court’ has sentenced Nina Tymoshenko, a 66-year-old pensioner, to 16 years’ imprisonment on ‘treason’ charges. This was the latest of multiple ‘trials’ where Ukrainians have received monstrous sentences for supposedly passing on information to Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU] which they were unlikely to be in possession of. It is, however, Russia’s worst sentence to date against a Ukrainian woman, and one of the most savage sentences against any Ukrainian political prisoner given that the 16-year sentence would end when Nina Tymoshenko was already 82. In fact, the conditions in any Russian or Russian-controlled prison colony are so bad that the chances of the 66-year-old surviving to the end of the sentence would be very low.

Very little is known about Nina Tymoshenko, except that she is originally from Zakarpattia in Western Ukraine but had lived in Sevastopol for some time. She was charged, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code, with ‘state treason’, so has Russian citizenship. This, however, means little given that Russia has made it impossible to live, work, receive medical care, etc. on occupied territory without taking a Russian passport.

It was claimed that Tymoshenko had, in September 2022, contacted the ‘hotline’ of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence and “offered assistance aimed against the security of the Russian Federation”. Then in October and November 2023, she allegedly gathered information about military sites of the Russian defence ministry and passed these to an SBU officer. She supposedly also passed on photos and videos with information about the location of boats of the Black Fleet.

All such ‘trials’ take place behind closed doors, with even independent lawyers forced to sign a non-divulgence agreement or face criminal charges themselves. There is, unfortunately, nothing to suggest that Tymoshenko had a proper lawyer, with this one of a large number of cases where literally nothing was known until a sentence was announced on 23 March 2025. This was handed down by the occupation ‘Sevastopol municipal court’. The 16-year term of imprisonment is for a medium-security prison colony (the harshest for women), and a further 200 thousand rouble fine was imposed.

Russia has been using such charges against Ukrainians since its invasion of Crimea in 2014, with the information that Nina Tymoshenko is supposed to have passed on very similar to that named in the ‘trial’ of another pensioner, Halyna Dovhopola. The latter is about to turn 70 in a Russian prisoner colony, having been imprisoned since 2019.

The number of all such ‘trials’ has increased dramatically since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with many of the civilians abducted from occupied parts of Kherson or Zaporizhzhia oblasts, first held incommunicado for up to two years and then sentenced to long terms of imprisonment for supposed ‘spying’. The charges appear to differ little from case to case, with the person always accused of having passed on information, normally about military deployment, to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence or SBU. Those without Russian citizenship are accused of ‘spying’ under Article 276 of the Russian criminal code. Ukrainians like Nina Tymoshenko and Halyna Dovhopola, whose pensions would have been blocked without Russian citizenship, as would health care, are, cynically, accused of ‘treason’ over the same alleged actions.

All of these prosecutions are in violation of international law, which prohibits Russia, as occupying state, from applying its legislation on occupied territory. They also take place with near total disregard of a person’s right to a fair trial, with the vast majority of cases involving people held incommunicado, subjected to torture and psychological pressure, and prevented from seeing independent lawyers. The indictments generally feel as though they have been copy-pasted from a template, with the Russian FSB and Investigative Committee seemingly unconcerned about plausibility. Iryna Horobtsova, an IT designer from Kherson, was abducted by the Russians on her birthday in May 2022. She was ‘sentenced’ by an illegal occupation ‘court’ in August 2024 to 10.5 years’ imprisonment, with the charge being of ‘spying’ alleged to have taken place a full ten months after Iryna had been seized and held incommunicado.

The Crimean Human Rights Group reports that there are at least 17 women from occupied parts of Crimea, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts held prisoner either in occupied Crimea or in Russia. The full figure is, in fact, likely to be much higher, and there are also many political prisoners, including some women, seized in occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.