The FSB detained Liudmyla Kolesnikova in Crimea: the woman was accused of spying and supporting Ukraine financially due to the purchase of digital postage stamps.
As it became known from Ms. Kolesnikova’s letter, which she transferred from the Pre-Trial Detention Center no 1 of Simferopol, she was born on March 1, 1990. She is a lawyer by education. Since 2022, she has lived in Ireland, where she obtained “temporary protection status”. In June 2024, she came to the occupied Yalta for her mother’s funeral, but was detained by FSB men right at the cemetery. Ms. Kolesnikova was locked up in the Pre-Trial Detention Centre no 2.
“My parents died. My sister is in Ukraine and doesn’t help me either. I only had a cat left, I begged them (the FSB men) to let him go, but they did not do that and he died of hunger. On October 3, 2024, a criminal case was opened against me, with a pre-trial detention. Before that, I had been detained for 3 months: without hygiene items, comb and underwear. In a room with painted windows, like in Solzhenitsyn’s books,” Liudmyla Kolesnikova wrote.
According to her, she was accused of espionage and providing financial assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 25 euros. The woman says that the criminal case under Art. 275 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation was opened due to two NFT stamps with the “Russian warship”, which she bought two years ago for 25 euros. The only evidence of the prosecution, as she believes, is an extract from the Revolut banking application.
Ms. Kolesnikova adds that she has no lawyer to defend her, and she can’t defend herself being in the prison.
As Ms. Olha Skrypnyk, Chairperson of the Crimean Human Rights Group Board (CHRG) has emphasized, the trend of persecution under the articles of “treason” and “espionage” in Crimea has intensified in 2024. The Crimeans had been also persecuted under these articles before 2022, but after the full-scale invasion, the number of arrests and convictions on such trumped-up charges has increased. At least 50 Ukrainian citizens from Crimea are named in the trumped-up cases of “treason” and “espionage”.
