Russia: Jailed Ukrainian Denied Urgent Medical Care

Ukrainian citizen Oleksandr (Aleksandr) Marchenko told his lawyers that in December 2018 he travelled from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, via Russia to Donetsk, in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine, on personal business. On 18 December 2018, he was abducted by masked men when crossing back into Russia. According to Oleksandr Marchenko, the men put a bag over his head, took away his mobile phone and other personal belongings, and drove him to a secret prison belonging to the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR). There he was held incommunicado in the basement, in a cell without windows, bed, toilet or running water. From the first day of his abduction Oleksandr Marchenko was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, including electrocution, until he agreed to read out his self-incriminating “confession” on video.

On 18 February 2019, he was made to sign papers that he had no complaints against the “Ministry of State Security of the DNR”, was driven to the Russian border and was handed over to the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). The FSB officers put a bag over Oleksandr Marchenko’s head and drove him for several hours to the Krasnodar Regional FSB. There, he was questioned about a man whom he says he had never met. Oleksandr Marchenko told his lawyers that after the questioning FSB officers took him to a police station where he spent the following night. Based on a fabricated record of an administrative offence, drawn by police, a court ruled the next day to have Oleksandr Marchenko detained for 10 days. Subsequently, the police fabricated two more administrative cases against Oleksandr Marchenko – each time on the day when he would have served in full his previous administrative detention (on 1 March 2019 and 16 March 2019), and he continued to be kept in custody. 

During his arbitrary administrative detention, FSB officials, together with “security officials” from the “DNR”, repeatedly interrogated Oleksandr Marchenko and made him sign a “confession”. They made threats against him and his family, and denied him access to a lawyer. On 1 May 2019, Oleksandr Marchenko was remanded by a court accused of contraband, initially for two months. This detention was subsequently extended several times. On 6 December 2019 Oleksandr Marchenko was charged with espionage. On 26 November 2020, the Krasnodar Regional Court found Oleksandr Marchenko guilty under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Espionage”) and sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment in a strict regime penal colony. His appeals were rejected. Amnesty International and other organizations monitoring human rights have documented cases of individuals deprived of their liberty by the so-called “Ministry of State Security” in Russia-occupied eastern Ukraine who placed them in secret detention and subjected them to torture and other ill-treatment in order to extract a forced “confession”, which was then used for their “conviction”. For more details about such practices, please see the joint report by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, You Don’t Exist: Arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, and torture in eastern Ukraine.