30-year-old Vladyslav Afanasiev has been denied contact with his family and healthcare since his ‘arrest’ in the summer of 2024 on surreal ‘treason’ charges
Vladyslav Afanasiev
Vladyslav Afanasiev
A Crimean occupation ‘court’ has upheld a 15-year sentence against 30-year-old Vladyslav Afanasiev from Feodosia. The young man has been held in near total isolation since the summer of 2024 and both ‘trial’ and ‘appeal’ were held behind closed doors. The number of ‘state treason trials’ under Article 275 of the Russian criminal code has sharply increased since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with information about any individual victim generally scant.
It is known that Vladyslav Afanasiev has been imprisoned since the summer of 2024, with his family up till now denied direct contact with him. Relatives told the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre on 13 March 2025 that they are to be allowed one brief meeting with Afanasiev before he is moved, almost certainly to a Russian prison colony very far from occupied Crimea.
On 6 December 2024, the occupation ‘prosecutor’ reported that the so-called ‘Crimean high court had sentenced Afanasiev to 15 years in a maximum-security prison colony. One of the supposed grounds for ‘state treason’ charges was that Afanasiev had, in August 2022, transferred money to a fund in support of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
It was also claimed that, in March 2023, he had gathered, and passed on, via chat-bots controlled by Ukraine’s Defence Ministry, photographs and the geolocation of places where paratrooper and military boats are deployed in Feodosia. The same phrase is repeated in virtually all such reports, namely the phrase that this information could have been used by Ukraine to strike at Russian military targets” with this claimed by the aggressor state to be directed against its security.
The claims are rejected by Afanasiev’s cousin, Ihor Kryvonos. It was not a military vessel that Afanasiev photographed, but a ship that had been taken out of service and was moored in a civic port. There was nothing at all secretive about this, with Afanasiev having posted the photo on social media.
Kryvonos also dismisses the assertion that his cousin transferred money to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. The prosecution claimed that Afanasiev had done this via a person called Ilya. The latter, however, was no SBU [Ukrainian Security Service] officer, but a childhood friend of Afanasiev’s, who works as an electrician. According to Kryvonos, his cousin made only one bank transfer, of around 10 dollars, at the beginning of the full-scale invasion, to help rescue children from occupied territory.
Back in January, Kryvonos explained that Ilya was planning to get something in writing from his work to confirm that he is not an SBU officer. He hoped that this would be a big plus if confirmed in ‘court’.
The problem here, as in all Russia’s ‘trials’ of Ukrainian political prisoners, is that all those involved, from the FSB to the ‘judges’, are well aware that their role is to ensure the sentence demanded. Even evidence proving that a person could not physically have done what is claimed in the indictment or proof that evidence has been falsified will simply be ignored.
That was, doubtless, the case here as the appeal was rejected, with the ‘judges’ clearly seeing no need to imitate a comprehensive review.
There was every need. Under any circumstances, Russia as an occupying power would be in violation of international law through its application of Russian legislation on occupied territory. There is particular cynicism in its use of ‘treason’ charges against Ukrainians purely on the basis of Russian citizenship, without which you can’t work, receive healthcare, bring up children, etc. on occupied territory, and in a 15-year sentence for a donation and a photo.