The occupying court in Dzhankoy illegally sentenced the former commander of the Slavutych ship, activist and volunteer Oleksiy Kiselyov to 8.5 years of imprisonment in a high-security prison. According to information from the “Crimean Process”, the author of this “sentence” was occupying judge Liliana Solovyova.

Oleksiy Kiselyov is one of the citizens of Ukraine kidnapped in the newly occupied territories and sent to the Simferopol pre-trial detention center. The Russian Federation does not even recognize the detention of some of these people, keeps it incommunicado, without any, even contrived, procedural grounds — but some are accused in falsified criminal cases, like Oleksiy Kiselyov.

On July 22, in Henichesk, the occupiers kidnapped Mr. Oleksiy right on the street, beat him, tied him up, pushed him into a minibus and took him to search his house, and later to interrogation by the Rosguard. For several more days, the volunteer was beaten and tortured, after that, he was sent to occupied Crimea, where the FSS tortured the political prisoner for another 2 days – forcing him to confess to terrorism and involvement in the Crimean Tatar volunteer battalion named after Nariman Chelebidzhikhan, to tell about the placement of weapons and personnel of the Henichesk territorial defense. Already in the pre-trial detention center, the prisoner was forced to go on hunger strike because he was not provided with any medical assistance.

The Mission of the President condemns this additional criminal sentence and demands that the occupying country stop the criminal prosecution of a citizen of Ukraine – the circumstances of the illegal arrest and conditions of detention of Oleksiy Kiselyov are inhumane and contradict all possible norms of international humanitarian law.

We draw the attention of law enforcement agencies of Ukraine to another violation of the rights and freedoms of a citizen of Ukraine. We call on the international community to resolutely react to these criminal actions of the Russian Federation and increase pressure on the aggressor country.

Politically motivated persecution, repression and illegal sentences in the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea must stop immediately, which is impossible without the deoccupation of the peninsula.