25-year-old Hennady Lymeshko has become the latest Ukrainian to receive a long sentence in Russian-occupied Crimea on highly implausible “sabotage” charges. There was never any objective evidence to back the FSB’s claim on August 15, 2017, to have averted acts of sabotage, only a “confession” from Mr. Lymeshko, who showed signs of having been beaten. The FSB appears to have maintained methods of pressure on Mr. Lymeshko, who pleaded guilty during the hearing at the Sudak City Court on May 10. It is very likely that he was deceived through promises that if he did not challenge the charges he would receive a shorter sentence.
Instead, the de facto prosecutor demanded eight and a half years with the judge only reducing this by six months. Journalist Anton Naumlyuk, who was in the court, reported that Judge Yevgeny Rykov considered the fact that Mr. Lymeshko has a young daughter to be an extenuating circumstance. The court, however, found there to be an aggravating factor in the alleged political motive of “hostility to the Russian Federation in connection with reunification (sic) of Crimea.”
The prosecution claimed that Mr. Lymeshko, who is from the Kharkiv Oblast, had been recruited by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and had been sent to Crimea on August 9, 2017, to carry out a number of acts of sabotage. He was supposed to have received a previously prepared explosive device on August 12 and gone with it to block up an electricity line in Sudak. He was charged with preparing and storing explosives.
The FSB generally does everything in its power to ensure that prisoners are “persuaded” to file a guilty plea, meaning that no proof need be provided. The trial lasted all of an hour, and the judge spent only 20 minutes in the consulting chamber before issuing a ruling and providing all parties with certified copies, properly prepared in advance.
Mr. Lymeshko is planning to appeal.
The young Ukrainian’s arrest came exactly a year after the first in a number of seizures of Ukrainians on “sabotage” charges. All of the cases have followed a pattern, with the first news of them, including for the men’s families, coming from televised “confessions.” In at least three of the cases – those of Redvan Suleymanov, Volodymyr Prysich and Oleksiy Stohniy – the men were eventually sentenced on charges that had little or nothing to do with their “confessions”; three of the first four men arrested – Mr. Prysich, Yevhen Panov and Andriy Zakhtei – have said that they gave them under torture.
The FSB claimed on August 15, 2017, that Mr. Lymeshko had been arrested on August 12, after he arrived in Crimea on August 9. They asserted that through his arrest, they had “prevented several acts of sabotage against infrastructure and vital services in Crimea.”
There were multiple question marks over the FSB’s claims. Even if Ukraine’s border guards had turned a blind eye to Mr. Lymeshko carrying explosives (as well as a very large handsaw) into occupied Crimea, he also needed to pass through Russian border control. Yet three days later, the FSB allegedly found two TNT explosive devices on him, together with a mechanism for detonating them, flammable liquids and a digital camera (supposedly for the purpose of recording the sabotage in order to report back to his overseers).
In that statement, the FSB called Mr. Lymeshko “an agent of the SBU in the Kherson oblast, sent to Crimea to carry out acts of sabotage” and claimed that he had worked as a senior reconnaissance officer in the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the ATO zone.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces confirmed that Mr. Lymeshko was a contract serviceman from November 2016 through May 2017, but said that he had been dismissed as unsuited for the job and that he had no ties to the military.
The FSB asserted that he was supposed to bring down the electricity supply from Sudak to Novyi Svet, with this affecting up to 50,000 people, to set fire to the forest in the Sudak-Rybachye-Alushta area and one other act of arson, and to cause a rock avalanche that would block the Sudak-Novyi Svet highway,
He was allegedly arrested while trying to damage the above-mentioned electricity lines with this handsaw.
All of this was broadcast on Russian television, together with Mr. Lymeshko’s confession to having been in a sabotage group since the autumn of 2015.
A worryingly new element, which the FSB appeared to be coordinating with the Kremlin-backed militants of the so-called “Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics” (DPR and LPR) was that Mr. Lymeshko spoke of plans to carry out sabotage in the DPR, Crimea and in Russia.
As mentioned, the “confession” was anything but convincing, and not only because of the marks suggesting physical force had been applied. Mr. Lymeshko was clearly trying to provide answers required of him, and it was also obvious that the video was not continuous, but made up of separate parts pasted together.