On March 3, 2021, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don (the Russian Federation) convicted a Ukrainian activist from Crimea Oleh Prykhodko and sentenced to five years of imprisonment in a maximum security penal colony.
Oleg Prykhodko is 62 years old; he spent his whole life in Crimea. He earned mainly by metal welding and blacksmithing. Prior to the occupation, Prykhodko headed the branch of the nationalist Svoboda party in Saksky district, but when the so-called “Crimean State Council” banned it in 2014, he resigned, but sometimes came to Kyiv to his friends and party members. After annexation of Crimea in 2014, Prykhodko refused to recognize Russian rules: he refused Russian citizenship, their passport and openly resented the events. In June 2016, on the eve of the city day, Prykhodko was arrested for three days for Ukrainian vehicle registration plates, which at that time were already banned for use in Crimea. In September 2019, Prykhodko and his wife were summoned for questioning to the Crimean FSB in Simferopol.
The man was sentenced in a criminal case for allegedly attempting to commit a terrorist act, as well as preparing for the arson of the Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Lviv in the summer of 2019.
“In occupied Crimea I interfered with Putin. I was arrested so as not to spoil the picture of general well-being”, – the final word of the Ukrainian activist Oleh Prykhodko before the verdict was announced.
The Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea condemns the actions of the occupying authorities, records every case of such persecution and is in constant communication with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and international institutions.