Russian court sentences nine Ukrainian prisoners in one week – media

According to Mediazona, citing available court documents, all nine "cases" were examined by a single judge – Andrei Slepukhin.

The CDMC website does not specify where the hearings took place; however, all the lawyers mentioned in the case files work in the capital of the Republic of Mordovia, the city of Saransk.

According to the court records, on February 2 Judge Slepukhin handed down "sentences" to Maksym Rud, Ivan Kozyrod; on February 3 – to Ihor Kravets and Ruslan Shevchenko; on February 4 – to Vasyl Lomakin and Maksym Lytvyn; on February 5 – to Denys Kryhulskyi and Maksym Liutyi; and on February 6 – to Bohdan Trofymiuk.

At the time of publication, the CDMC press service had not disclosed the prison terms imposed on the convicted men.

All nine Ukrainians were charged with "training for terrorism and participation in a terrorist community," which is the standard qualification used in cases against captured fighters of the Azov Brigade and other units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine that are recognized in Russia as "terrorist organizations."

The anonymous project War Tears, which publishes the names of Ukrainian prisoners of war, identifies Rud, Kozyrod, Kravets, Shevchenko, Kryhulskyi, Liutyi, and Trofymiuk as members of Azov, while Lytvyn and Lomakin are described as fighters of the Donbas battalion.

According to the project, Liutyi, Lytvyn, and Lomakin were held in the penal colony in Olenivka in the summer of 2022 and were wounded in the explosion that killed at least 53 Ukrainian prisoners.

At the beginning of October last year, the CDMC had already held off-site hearings in Mordovia. At that time, the same judge, Slepukhin, considered the cases of three Azov prisoners – Andrii Ostapchuk, Myroslav Pipash, and Roman Martiian.

As Ukrinform previously reported, the Southern District Military Court of the Russian Federation in Rostov-on-Don sentenced 29-year-old Bohdan Musikhin to 17 years in prison in a case concerning "participation in a terrorist organization and training for terrorism."

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