Russia hands long prison sentences to 15 captured Ukrainian fighters

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ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia (Reuters) -Fifteen members of a Ukrainian militia group were convicted by a Russian military court on Friday of taking part in “a terrorist organisation” and sentenced to between 15 and 21 years in a maximum security penal colony, Russia’s prosecutor general said.

The men were members of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion who were captured in 2022. Their trial took place behind closed doors in a military court in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.

There was no immediate comment on the verdicts from Ukraine, whose human rights ombudsman has previously described the proceedings as shameful.

Rights groups, including Russia’s Memorial, have alleged that the prosecution of the men was a violation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Russia rejects that, as the charges were based on alleged activity dating back up to eight years before the start of the full-scale war between the two countries in 2022. The men were not accused of war crimes.

Aidar was one of dozens of volunteer battalions that emerged in Ukraine after fighting broke out in 2014 with Russia-backed groups that declared breakaway “republics” in the east of the country. The units, some with ultra-nationalist roots, were later absorbed into Ukraine’s armed forces.

The charges against the men related to the period from August 2014 to March 2022, when they were accused of taking part in a banned terrorist group and of committing acts aimed at “the violent seizure of power and the overthrow of the constitutional order of the Russian Federation”.

Russian news outlet Mash quoted a lawyer for the accused men as saying that two of them had admitted their guilt but that the other 13 planned to appeal.

(Reporting by Reuters, writing by Mark TrevelyanEditing by Andrew Osborn)