The lawyers for the captured Ukrainian sailors will appeal the decision of Moscow’s Lefortovsky District Court to prolong their clients’ arrest, lawyer Nikolai Polozov said.
On January 16, the court prolonged the arrest of another four Ukrainian sailors until April 24: Volodymyr Lesny, Viktor Bespalchenko, Volodymyr Varymeza, and Vladyslav Kostyshin.
“All decisions made by the Lefortovsky Court yesterday and today to prolong the POWs’ arrest will be appealed by our lawyers within the three-day period established by the legislation,” Polozov wrote on Facebook.
On November 25, 2018, Russian border guards stopped three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Yany Kapu tug and the Berdiansk and the Nikopol armored gunboats, which were en route from Odesa to Mariupol, in the Kerch Strait. Twenty-four Ukrainians were detained and arrested.
The Russian Federal Security Service opened a criminal case and charged all 24 with “illegal border-crossing by a group of persons by previous concert or by an organized group, using violence or the threat to use violence.”
