“I am Russian! But not a Russian citizen”. A Ukrainian serviceman’s defiant address to a Russian court that upheld his 21‑year prison sentence

The court has held that I made an attempt upon the constitutional order of the Russian Federation; the investigation maintains that I made an attempt upon its Constitution. Are you serious? I have no interest in the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and never have had. I have my very own Constitution of Ukraine! And of all the constitutions in the world, it is the only one that interests me. And if the investigation believes that constitutional principles such as the rotation of power and the separation of powers are in force in their country—well, by all means! Live in that world! What have I got to do with any of it?!

I will be told that the matter concerns territorial integrity. Well, I recognise it too, within the internationally recognised borders. The borders recognised by world leaders such as Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Alexander Lukashenko and many others. Why do you forgive them their disagreement with your version of the borders, while for me… for me it is twenty years for the very same thing! It is enough to bring tears to my eyes.

Not the kind of tears that came when they battered my limbs and knocked out my teeth during the torture in Donetsk, with electric current and with starvation. But tears brought on by the nature of the charge.

The court considers me a terrorist, a nationalist, a hater of all things Russian. I am no masochist, I bear no hatred for myself. I am Russian! But not a Russian citizen. I am a citizen of multinational Ukraine. And I also consider myself the equal of all the other peoples. Not a little brother, but an equal!

I am a terrorist, the court asserts. Whom did I ever take hostage? Where did I ever plant a bomb? When, and whom, did I ever blackmail at gunpoint, or intimidate? I am charged with no such acts. I have been declared a terrorist without cause. They might at least have set it all out properly. It seemed to me that when the prosecutor was delivering his speech, and the judge his guilty verdict, they were more captive than we are. At any rate, I’d like to think better of people than they really are.

Truly, just think about it: I was accused of undergoing terrorist training on account of my service after being mobilised in 2015. My military unit had nothing to do with Aidar, Azov or Donbas [battalions]—and still has nothing to do with them. I was simply mobilised, and one year and four months later I was demobilised. Spent a while in uniform, bearing arms. And even then I was already planning “terrorist activity”? Are you serious?!

And in closing. A little insider information. I hope I won’t be fined for it. When my defence attorney had read through my closing statement after the sentence of twenty years in a strict-regime penal colony, she told me that they might well give me more. I said to her: does anyone really imagine that a Ukrainian could survive twenty years in a Russian colony?

Perhaps these public trials are, for us, the last opportunity to speak our truth in relative freedom. For where, after all, does strength lie? Strength lies in truth! That is where true strength really resides. In being in the right! And before the highest court of all, I am at peace.