The Crimean Supreme Court is due to hear on December 26 the last appeals filed by the defense of the Ukrainian Navy servicemen who were detained in the Black Sea a month ago, a court representative told the press.
“Five more appeals have been received regarding Bezyazychny, [unit commander] Hrytsenko, [Nikopol gunboat commander] Nebylytsia, Semydotsky, and [Yany Kapu tugboat commander] Melnychuk,” the representative said.
“These are the last appeals,” he said.
According to the court representative, there are no appeals regarding the arrest of four sailors.
To Interfax’s knowledge, these are the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) officer Vasyl Soroka, and sailors Andriy Artemenko and Andriy Eider. The three men were injured during the incident and put under arrest by a court in Kerch. The Kerch court told Interfax last week they had received no appeals, and the deadlines for filing appeals were long past.
There is no appeal against the arrest of sailor Volodymyr Tereschenko, either.
On December 19-21 and December 24, the Crimean Supreme Court extended the custody of ten Ukrainian sailors, namely Volodymyr Varymez, Andriy Oprysko, Yuriy Budzylo, Serhiy Tsybizov, Bohdan Holovash, Serhiy Popov, Mykhailo Vlasiuk, Viktor Bespalchenko, Vladyslav Kostyshyn, and Berdiansk gunboat commander Roman Mokriak and corrected the technical mistake of a lower instance court. Their arrest will expire on January 24, instead of January 25, 2019.
On December 25 the court is due to hear appeals of the defense of sailors Viacheslav Zynchenko, Volodymyr Lysovy, Serhiy Chulyba, Andriy Shevchenko, and SBU officer Andriy Drach.
Russian border guards used weapons to stop three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Yany Kapu tug and the Berdiansk and the Nikopol armored gunboats, on their way from Odesa to Mariupol near the Kerch Strait on November 25. The ships were conveyed to Kerch.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the Ukrainian warships entered Russia’s territorial waters on orders by Kyiv and described the incident as an act of provocation coordinated by two Ukrainian Security Service officers. Russia also claimed that Kyiv did not duly notify it that Ukrainian naval vessels were planning to pass through the Kerch Strait.
Kyiv called the Russian border guard’s actions unlawful and accused Moscow of violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and a treaty between Ukraine and Russia on cooperation in using the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.
The Ukrainians are charged with “conspiracy by a group of persons or an organized group to illegally cross the border using violence or the threat to use violence” (Russian Criminal Code Article 322 Part 3). If found guilty, the Ukrainians might face up to six years in prison.
Courts in Simferopol and Kerch remanded 22 sailors and two Ukrainian Security Service officials in custody for nearly two months.
All of the Ukrainians have been transported from Crimea to Moscow, 21 of them have been put to the Lefortovo detention facility, and the other three, who were wounded, have been placed in the infirmary of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention facility.
Under the 1949 Geneva Convention, the arrested sailors are prisoners-of-war and thus cannot be tried by a common court, their lawyers said. This view reflects official Kyiv’s position. However, Moscow said this status does not apply to the sailors because Ukraine and Russia are not at war.
