You're reading: As state efforts fall short, activists fight for Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia

In December 2017, the Ukrainian government released 233 prisoners in return for 73 captives held by Russian-led forces in the Donbas. It was among the largest prisoner swaps in over three years of war, and a major victory for Ukraine.

But there is another group of prisoners with less clear chances of walking free. Sixty-six citizens of Ukraine remain de facto hostages on Russian territory, and Kyiv must do more to free them, according a group of advocates for the prisoners.

The activists — a former prisoner, the father of a Ukrainian kidnapped by Russia’s security services, a human rights worker, and film directors and journalists covering political prisoners — gathered on April 23 at the Kyiv’s Free Russia House to screen two films about prisoners and to discuss whether the Ukrainian authorities actually have a strategy to free the captives.

Despite some success in raising awareness, they see a long battle ahead to get their countrymen released.

Other prisoners

The captives in question are Crimean dissidents and Ukrainians from the mainland, whom Russia has persecuted and imprisoned on political grounds. But unlike prisoners held in the Donbas, there is no international framework for negotiating their release. Neither the Minsk Process, nor the Normandy format addresses their fate, says Maria Tomak, coordinator at the Media Initiative for Human Rights and the event’s moderator.

“Today, when you talk about hostages, it means nothing. It’s a subjective evaluation,” she told the Kyiv Post. “It’s not connected to a state guarantee to free them or help their families.”

Tomak believes Ukraine must pass a law on “protected peoples” that would grant them legal status. Several such draft laws have been submitted to parliament, but they are generally poorly written and unsatisfactory, she says.

Activists discuss efforts to free Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia on political charges at Kyiv’s Free Russia House on April 23, 2018. From left to right: Ihor Gryb, RFE/RL journalist Stas Yurchenko, director Vyacheslav Bihun, former prisoner Yury Yatsenko, and rights activist Maria Tomak. (Matthew Kupfer)

Absent effective state action, civil society activists have been forced to advocate for these prisoners. One of these people is Ihor Gryb. In 2017, his son Pavlo was kidnapped by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) while he was visiting a female friend in Belarus. He was then transferred to Russia to face murky terrorism charges — despite having never before set foot on Russian soil.

Before 2014, Ukraine had no experience with advocating for political prisoners, Gryb said. As a result, when the war with Russia began, the country’s leadership was poorly prepared.

“We, the relatives, had to come together and create an organization of relatives of the Kremlin’s political prisoners,” he said.

That organization — aptly called Relatives of Kremlin Prisoners — has been pushing for the Ukrainian government to create an official ombudsman for prisoners’ issues. Progress has been slow, but they are already seeing some positive developments.

The Occupied Territories Ministry now has a branch that works on these issues. And Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin raised the issue during a meeting with the foreign ministers of the G7 countries in Toronto this week.

More broadly, advocates like Gryb face a challenge of raising awareness about Ukrainians imprisoned in Russia. Political prisoners are not a top priority for Ukrainian citizens and politicians in a country facing economic problems and an ongoing war.

Gryb understands that well. Before the FSB kidnapped his son, he had heard about political prisoners, but never thought much about the issue.

“It was somewhere out there, in another dimension. You don’t pay attention to this until it touches you,” he said. “And when it touches you, you become a rights defender, a lawyer, a politician, and a law writer.”

Public attention

Even when society pays attention to political prisoners, that attention is often distributed unequally. Oleg Sentsov, a Crimean director imprisoned in Russia on false terrorism charges, has become a household name — both in Ukraine and, to lesser degree, abroad. But fewer know about his co-defendant Oleksandr Kolchenko.

That poses a challenge for the people attempting to raise awareness.

Stas Yurchenko, a RFE/RL journalist and co-creator of a film about Crimean dissident Volodymyr Balukh, actively follows politically motivated criminal cases in Crimea and expects that, in half a year, there will be 100 to 120 Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia.

“We need to make each of them into a personality, to put their names and faces on banners,” Yurchenko said. Even so, he is unsure that this would significantly help advance their cause.

Yury Yatsenko has plenty of ideas about how to help prisoners. That’s because he was one himself.

In May 2014, Yatsenko was detained on alleged visa violations in Russia and imprisoned for a year. During his time in captivity, the authorities subjected him to regular beatings and torture, attempting to force him to admit that he was an agent of Ukraine’s security agencies or the nationalist paramilitary Right Sector. To stave off further torture, Yatsenko eventually even cut his wrists and stomach.

During the discussion at Free Russia House, Yatsenko raised the idea of a letter-writing campaign to political prisoners and organizing legal assistance for them. But he faces a fairly straightforward obstacle.

After his release in 2015, Yatsenko was named an advisor to Foreign Minister Klimkin. But that is not a salaried position, and he admits that his access to the minister is limited.

“I have many plans and ideas, but to realize them I need a lot of people and resources,” he said.

Dissatisfaction

For all the efforts being made by civil society to free political prisoners, the results leave many unsatisfied.

One couple in the audience, who identified themselves as internally displaced persons from Donetsk, told the story of a friend, a 65-year-old woman imprisoned in the Russian-occupied town of Makiivka on a 14-year prison sentence. In theory, her predicament should be marginally better than that of prisoners in Russia — the Ukrainian government is working to free her and others through the Minsk Process.

In practice, however, the results are few. The couple complained that, previously, there were volunteers who were able to successfully negotiate prisoner exchanges with the Russian occupation authorities in the Donbas. Then, the Security Service of Ukraine monopolized the process and the volunteers lost access.

(Today, ex-political prisoner and lawmaker Nadiya Savchenko and Volodymyr Ruban — who previously brokered prisoner exchanges — are awaiting trial on terrorism charges for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Ukrainian government.)

“Why doesn’t anyone of the people here tell the truth?” the woman from Donetsk said. “In truth, Ukraine doesn’t do anything to free those people.”

Gryb, whose son was abducted by Russia, suggested that the struggle to free political prisoners must ingrain new values in the Ukrainian state.

He cited the example of Israel, which traded over a thousand prisoners — including many convicted of terrorism — for the release of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier imprisoned by Hamas from 2006 to 2011. Such an exchange was possible because the Israeli state “values each of its citizens,” he said.

“Until we achieve that in our country…we will live in this not-so-good world.”