Ukrainian activists sentenced to 15 years over trumped-up espionage charges in Crimea

Source: Crimean Human Rights Group

A Crimean court has sentenced pro-Ukrainian activist Oksana Senezhuk to 15 years in prison and fined her 200,000 rubles on  “state treason” charges.

Former languages teacher Senezhuk, had worked in the Sevastopol City Council.  She was vocal about her pro-Ukrainian views, and joined the Maidan protests in Kyiv in 2013.

She was detained in 2022 after her critical comments on the Russian invasion in Ukraine

The 58-year-old lady went through multiple interrogations. On August 14, 2024, Russia’s FSB raided her home and arrested her the following day.

On December 26, the “court” found Senezhuk guilty of committing “state treason. The Russian-led prosecutors said she had assisted Ukrainian intelligence by providing information on the locations of Russian Black Sea Fleet ships.

They claimed that she had spied on the ships and took photos, acting “under the direction of a Ukrainian agent” with whom she had contact since her tenure in the Sevastopol administration before 2014.

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In my previous column, I wrote about social innovations in Ukraine. Those innovations are part of civic resilience and the democratization of security, which Europe is paying close attention to right now. The EU is trying to work out how to spread responsibility for its own security across society as a whole, rather than leaving it to institutions alone. It is looking for concrete ways to bring ordinary people into the work of defense and resistance.

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