Seven months of torture for Russian show trial of Ukrainians abducted from occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast

A Russian military court of appeal has slightly reduced the sentences, but has upheld the convictions of three Ukrainians, two of whom were abducted from occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast soon after the Russians invaded.  The ‘judges’ ignored not only the fundamental illegality of the charges brought against Serhiy Fedosenko; Vladyslav Vodolazskyy and Vitaliy Dziuba, but also the consistent and detailed accounts of the torture used against Fedosenko and Vodolazskyy over seven  months to extract the ‘confessions’ on which the entire ‘case’ was based.

34-year-old Serhiy Fedosenko and Vladyslav Vodolazskyy (37) were both taken prisoner by Russian soldiers on 18 August 2022, two days before the prosecution claimed that they had set off,to blow up a Russian checkpoint at Tokmak.  Vitaliy Dziuba, a 51-year-old military doctor, was seized later, in March 2023.  He stated immediately that the FSB had planted the grenades they claimed to have ‘found’ on him.

The prosecution asserted that there had been a plan to blow up a Russian checkpoint at Tokmak [Zaporizhzhia oblast] in order to force the invaders to leave. Lest this seem too evidently reasonably, they also alleged that the Ukrainians had planned to shoot and kill any Russians who survived the homemade bomb blast.  No such attack took place, with this one of a long line of ‘trials’ based on claims by Russia’s FSB that they thwarted the alleged attack. This one is especially unconvincing as the prosecution claimed that they had ‘thwarted’ an alleged attack by Fedosenko and Vodolazsky when the two were already in their custody.

Russia was an invading power whose military had seized Ukrainian territory and were holding it by force.  Even had such an attack on a Russian checkpoint either taken place or been planned, it would have been an act of resistance and hardly the ‘planned terrorist attack’ that the Russian prosecution was claiming for most of the ‘trial’.  In fact, just before the sentences were passed on 19 December 2024, the Russian prosecutor asked that the charge of ‘a planned act of terrorism’, under Article 205 § 3 of Russia’s criminal code, be changed to a planned ‘act of international terrorism’ under Article 361 § 3 3.  The prosecutor’s argument laid bare the cynicism of any of these charges.  He said that it should be ‘international terrorism’ because the alleged actions had taken place outside the Russian Federation, before Russia faked ‘a referendum’ and then claimed that the ‘Zaporizhzhia oblast’, not just occupied parts of it, had “become part of the RF.”  Both prosecutor and ‘judges’ preferred to ignore the most pertinent fact, namely that Russian soldiers had no right to be on Ukrainian soil.

The prosecutor further asked that the charge against Dziuba of ‘abetting terrorist activities’ under Article 205 § 3 be dropped. 

The original indictment had been passed to Russia’s notorious Southern District Military Court in September 2023, with 22 hearings before sentences were passed by presiding ‘judge’ Kirill Nikolaevich Krivtsov and two colleagues on 19 December 2024.  Serhiy Fedosenko was sentenced to 15 years’ maximum-security imprisonment, with the first three years in a prison, the worst of Russia’s penal institutions. He was also fined 450 thousand roubles.  Vladyslav Vodolazskyy was sentenced to 13 years maximum-security, with the first 3 years in a prison, and a fine of 350 thousand roubles.  Vitaliy Dziuba, whose alleged role had been merely to obtain weapons and components of the explosive devices, was sentenced to 10 years maximum-security prison colony, and to a 130 thousand rouble fine.  The Vlasikha military court of appeal, under presiding ‘judge’ Mikhail Mikhailovich Putilovskyy, appears to have seen no need for more than one hearing on 15 August.  The three Ukrainians took part by video link from Chechnya, where they had been illegally taken on the eve of the appeal.

Both Russian courts ignored the accounts given by Vodolazskyy and Fedosenko about being held incommunicado and tortured for seven months, as well as Dziuba’s retraction of his ‘written testimony’ which he had said, from the outset, that he had not been able to read.  The torture methods described were fully consistent with countless others since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So too, unfortunately, was the clear evidence that the supposed ‘lawyers’ foisted on them during the ‘investigation’ had been there merely to sign pieces of paper and paid no heed to the torture

Vodolazskyy issued a formal complaint in which he stated that he had been seized on 18 August 2022 and held incommunicado for seven months.  During that time, he had been beaten and subjected to electric current torture, with wires attached to his earlobes, little finger or other sensitive parts of the body.  He had first seen a lawyer and investigator only in March 2023.

Fedosenko described the same methods of torture during a hearing back in May 2024.  He stressed, however, that he was also subjected to psychological pressure, with the Russians threatening, from his abduction on 18 August 2022 that they would also imprison his mother and sister. He had not complained, or changed his testimony to the ‘investigator’ as he feared for his life and health.

No explanation was ever provided as to where the FSB were supposed to have found the explosive device which they claimed Vodolazsky and Fedosenko had set off to collect and detonate on 20 August 2022.  Since both men were already in Russian captivity, this is a telling omission.

There were countless other discrepancies.  Vodolazsky explained in June 2024 that he had served as a military doctor in a Ukrainian Armed Forces anti-aircraft missile regiment.  He had not managed to evacuate from Tokmak before the Russians seized control and was initially taken prisoner.  That first time, however, the Russians had disarmed him and let him go. Understanding the danger he was in, he had changed into civilian clothing and hidden at the home of Fedosenko, a friend and a mobilized member of Ukraine’s Territorial Defence.

The Russians had come for both men on 18 August 2022, with the torture beginning immediately, in order to force the men to ‘confess’ to planning an attack on a checkpoint.  There were indeed two fuses for setting off small explosive devices, Fedosenko said, which he and Dziuba had made for frightening off looters.  These, however, were only to frighten people and could not hurt anyone, he stressed, and Vodolazskyy had known nothing about them.

Vodolazskyy pointed out in his appeal that both he and Fedosenko should be treated as prisoners of war, with it likely that the same is true of Dziuba, who was, seemingly, also a military doctor. 

All of the above was ignored by the Vlasikha military court of appeal on 15 August 2025, with each sentence only reduced by 6 months.