A court in the Russian-occupied Crimea put 22 Ukrainian Navy sailors and two intelligence agents in pre-trial detention for two months on sham charges.
The Ukrainians were on board of three Ukrainian Navy vessels that Russian coast guard ships attacked and captured in the Black Sea near the Kerch Strait on Nov. 25. The Ukrainians were accused of illegally entering Russia’s territorial waters and face up to six years in prison if found guilty.
The accusation is based on Russia’s claim that the sea near Crimea is Russian territorial waters. However, international law and the international community doesn’t recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea and sees the peninsula – and the waters around it – as Ukrainian.
Since the Ukrainians haven’t broken any laws, they must be treated as prisoners of war, according to Gyunduz Memedov, chief prosecutor of the Crimean Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine operating in exile.
Instead, the prisoners are being tried as civilians, said Edem Semedliayev, a lawyer who agreed to defend Ukrainian sailors in courts.
Additionally, Russia is not letting International Red Cross representatives visit the imprisoned sailors, Lyudmila Denysova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, said on Nov. 28. Russian Ombudswoman Tatiana Moskalkova could not be reached for comment, according to her spokesman.
A screenshot from a video shows a Russian coast guard ship ramming a Ukrainian navy tug early on the morning on Nov. 25, 2018, in the Black Sea not far from the Kerch Strait. The video was shot from a Russian ship and leaked online the same day. (Courtesy)
Help comes
The Crimean Tatar community on the occupied peninsula moved quickly to help the captured Ukrainians, showing up for the courts, providing lawyers, and collecting money, food and clothes. It’s not clear if these will be allowed to be passed to the Ukrainians. Their next court will be held in January.
The Crimean Tatar community is largely in opposition to the Russian rulers of the peninsula.
Since Russia’s invasion, around 50,000 people, including Crimean Tatars, moved to inland Ukraine, escaping the authoritative regime, but about 300,000 Crimean Tatars still live on the peninsula.
Nine Crimean Tatars were killed for political reasons and 15 went missing since the 2014 annexation, according to Crimea International Research Center, a human rights watchdog. More than 20 Crimean Tatars have been imprisoned for political reasons.
At least some of the imprisoned Ukrainian sailors were transferred from Crimea to Moscow, according to their lawyer Dzhemil Tamishev and Borys Babin, Ukrainian president’s representative for Crimea.
More Kremlin prisoners
Russia holds 70 Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar political prisoners in custody. Now the number has grown to 94 prisoners.
Russian authorities used the presence of two officers of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, aboard with Ukrainian sailors as evidence of an orchestrated provocation that aimed to justify the imposition of martial law in Ukraine.
The SBU responded by saying that the counterintelligence officers had been “carrying out duties to repel Russian aggression for over four years, alongside their comrades from the Armed Forces, the National Guard, and the State Border Guard Service.”
Russia’s FSB published a video in which three Ukrainians – navy captain Volodymyr Lisovoi, Ivan Drach and sailor Serhiy Tsybizov – allegedly admitted that they crossed the border illegally on Nov. 26.
The Russian FSB identified Drach as an SBU counterintelligence lieutenant but did not reveal the identity of the second SBU officer. The SBU refused to identify its agents.
Who are the sailors?
The youngest among the arrested Ukrainians, navy sailor Andriy Eyder, is only 18. He called his girlfriend on Nov. 26, said he was wounded during the attack, and underwent surgery in a Kerch hospital but was fine, his stepmother Yevheniya Eyder wrote on Facebook on Nov. 26.
Ukrainian Navy officer Oleh Melnychuk, the commander of Yany Kapu military tug, stands in the courtroom of the Kyiv District Court of Simferopol on Nov. 28. The same day he and eight other Ukrainian sailors were arrested for two months in a pre-trial detention center. (Courtesy)
Eyder graduated from Odesa State Professional Marine Transport College and signed a contract with the Ukrainian navy only in August, his mother Viktoria Eyder told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Nov. 27.
Eyder served on the armored patrol boat Berdyansk under the command of Roman Mokriak, 32. Mokriak used to serve on Ukraine’s only submarine Zaporizhia based in Sevastopol until 2014. But, like many other navy officers, he was forced to flee Crimea after the Russian invasion. He served on the military boat Pryluki in 2015 and in 2016 he became a captain of the Berdyansk armored boat.
Mokriak denied all the accusations in court.
Yany Kapu captain Oleh Melnychuk has also refused to cooperate with the Kremlin sham court and demanded a translator from the Russian language during the trial, Semedliayev said.
One of Yany Kapu sailors, Yuriy Budzylo, 46, has also denied his guilt.
Natalia Budzylo, his ex-wife and mother of their two kids, described her ex-husband as a faithful patriot of Ukraine to the Kyiv Post on Nov. 28.
Ukrainian authorities have promised financial help for the family members of the Ukrainian soldiers.
“I don’t want any money, I want the father of my children to come back as soon as possible,” Budzylo said.
Government acts?
Babin, the president’s representative, told the Kyiv Post on Nov. 28 that the families of captured Ukrainians will get Hr 100,000 in financial aid from the state.
He also added that the Ukrainian government is preparing the claim against Russia to the European Court of Human Rights considering Russia’s direct violation of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention. The Crimean Prosecutor’s Office has already opened the case against Russia for violating the customs of war and illegal imprisonment of Ukrainians.
Many families of the captured Ukrainians discovered the news about the Kerch attack from the media.
Nariman Dzhelalov, deputy head of Crimean Representative Body Mejlis, based in Crimea but banned by the Kremlin, told the Kyiv Post that the Ukrainian sailors looked tired but showed no signs of physical abuse when he saw them at the court hearings.
“For now, the pressure is only moral,” Dzhelalov said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleksiy Sorokin contributed to this story.
