Russian military court hands down long prison sentences to five Ukrainian men abducted in occupied Melitopol and convicted of terrorist plot

A military court in Rostov-on-Don has convicted five Melitopol residents of plotting a terrorist attack soon after Russian troops occupied the Ukrainian city. Russian officials reportedly abducted the five suspects in Melitopol in April 2022, shortly after the city fell, and held them in secret prisons under torturous conditions. The men were later transferred to Crimea, where their arrests were formally documented, and moved to a pretrial detention facility in Moscow. All five Ukrainian men maintain their innocence and say they barely knew one another before they were kidnapped and imprisoned.

Russian investigators accused the five men of forming a “terrorist cell” and planning to detonate a car bomb near a humanitarian aid distribution point in Melitopol. Prosecutors claimed the men belonged to the “Union of ATO Veterans of Melitopol,” allegedly led by Ukrainian Territorial Defense serviceman Volodymyr Minko, who had been corresponding with a group from Zaporizhzhia. Russian officials presented confessions from the men, but defense attorneys say the self-incriminating statements were extracted under torture.