Young Crimean couple could face life sentences for resistance to Russia's war against Ukraine
The ‘trial’ is shortly to begin at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov of two very young Ukrainians from occupied Kerch, 24-year-old Serhiy Kozlov and Yevhenia Samoilova (26). Russia’s FSB is increasingly targeting couples or multiple members of a single family who, as in this case, are first abducted and held incommunicado for well over a year before any formal charges are announced. There are numerous other grounds for doubt about the indictment now announced, not least the relatively trivial nature of the one claimed action, and the lack of any proof to back the allegations of planned acts of ‘terrorism’ supposedly thwarted by Russia’s FSB.
Kozlov and Samoilova were seized by the Crimean FSB in April 2024, yet the first indication as to their whereabouts and the charges against them came when the occupation ‘prosecutor’ reported on 4 July 2025 that the ‘case’ against them had been passed to the Southern District Military Court.
It is, therefore, unclear when charges were laid, with this of critical importance since the young couple could well have been held for most of the time since April 2024 without any formal status at all. The FSB typically use such periods, where they are not officially recorded as holding a person, to torture out ‘confessions’ and use other forms of pressure. The FSB,, unfortunately, know that ‘judges’ from the notorious Southern District Military Court will ignore even the most detailed account given by defendants of the torture they endured, and other proof that the case is fabricated.
The first hearing on the actual charges is scheduled for 4 August 2025, with the entire ‘trial’ to be heard by just one ‘judge’, who has not been named. That this is a trial in name alone, with conviction pretdetermined, is clear from the initial report on 21 July 2025 by the Russian state TASS agency This cites the court as reporting that it will, on 4 August, begin hearing “the case of two agents of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence.”
The occupation Sevastopol ‘prosecutor’ is claiming that in September 2023, Serhiy Kozlov contacted officials from Ukraine’s Military Intelligence and that he got his partner, Yevhenia Samoilova to also “collaborate with a foreign security service”. According to the Russian version, it was on instructions from the couple’s fixer from Ukraine’s Military Intelligence that Kozlov learned how to make Molotov cocktails and homemade explosive devices. In October 2023, he allegedly set fire to a car in Kerch bearing the ‘Z’ and ‘V’ used as symbols of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with this supposedly causing damage of over 860 thousand roubles (just over 9 thousand euros).
If the above did, indeed, happen, it was an evident act of protest, one that should muster, at most, a charge of vandalism.
From here on, the charges against Kozlov and Samoilova are based solely on alleged ‘plans’ which the FSB claims it thwarted. The same alleged ‘fixer’ is supposed to have instructed them to blow up a railway track, and to killed a Russian military serviceman in Sevastopol. No further detail is provided, nor will be, since the entire ‘trial’ will, almost certainly take place behind closed doors. It is claimed that these supposed “acts of terrorism” did not take place only because the couple were ‘detained’ in April 2024, supposedly when they arrived in Sevastopol to remove components for making up two homemade explosive devices from a secret hiding place.
Serhiy Kozlov is charged with ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code); ‘an act of terrorism’ and ‘planning an act of terrorism’ (Article 205 § 2 and 3); ‘undergoing training in terrorist activities’ (Article 205.3) and explosives charges under Article 223.1 § 1). Yevhenia Samoilova is charged with ‘treason’; ‘planning an act of terrorism’ and explosives charges.
Given the lack of virtually any information and the period that the couple were held incommunicado, it seems unlikely that they have independent lawyers.