Russia Sentences Ukrainian Captives To Up To 23 Years

Moscow, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Mar, 2025) A Russian court on Wednesday sentenced a group of Ukrainians -- including soldiers and ex-soldiers -- taken captive at the start of Moscow's offensive to prison terms of up to 23 years on terrorism and other charges.

Russia is putting on trial hundreds of captured Ukrainian fighters on criminal charges and has also moved a number of civilians into Russia after taking them prisoner in occupied Ukrainian territory.

Twelve of the Ukrainians sentenced Wednesday were in Russian custody, while an additional 11 were handed their terms in absentia because they have been exchanged for Russian captives.

A military court in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don handed down terms ranging from 13 to 23 years, to be served in penal colonies with the harshest regimes, the Prosecutor-General's Office said.

The convictions were the latest sentences imposed on current and former members of Ukraine's Azov brigade which Russia banned in August 2022 as an "terrorist and extremist" organisation.

The head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, said earlier this month that Russia has convicted 145 members of Azov.

The Azov brigade was founded in Mariupol in 2014 as a paramilitary unit with ties to far-right nationalist groups, but is now part of the National Guard.

The unit is blasted by Russia as a group of neo-Nazis and ultranationalists, but the United States lifted a ban on supplying Azov with weapons last year, saying it found no evidence of current rights violations.

The prisoners convicted Wednesday were charged with taking part in a terror organisation and trying to overthrow Russian authorities -- despite not living in Russian territory before their arrest.

The men were brought into court in shackles, wrote Mediazona website, which reports on trials.

In emotional statements in court last week, they described being beaten and tortured in captivity.

The group were mostly captured during the 2022 siege of the city of Mariupol in eastern Ukraine and initially imprisoned in the separatist stronghold of Donetsk.

All of them served in the Azov special forces brigade at various points in time. But some had left the military or worked in civilian roles supporting the army such as cooks or plumbers.

The Azov brigade has near cult-status in Ukraine, elevated by its weeks-long defence of the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol at the start of the conflict.

The group was originally 24 people but 11, including nine women, were exchanged in prisoner swaps.

One man, Oleksandr Ishchenko, died in custody last year. Russia said the cause of death was heart problems but analysis of his body in Ukraine found that he had suffered multiple rib fractures and blunt chest trauma.