"My beloved cat was left at home. I begged them to let him out, but they didn't," recalls 35-year-old lawyer and blogger Lyudmila Kolesnikova in letters from prison about her arrest. The animal was incredibly lucky: after three weeks in a locked apartment, it was rescued by relatives of the arrested woman. But the owner has been behind bars for over a year and could spend another 19 in captivity, because the article she is charged with is called "treason against the motherland."

Lyudmila Kolesnikova (photo from the Telegram channel "Support for Lyudmila Kolesnikova")

There are currently 49 people like Lyudmila in Crimean prisons, according to human rights activists from the Crimean Process. These are prisoners whose criminal cases have already been referred to the courts. None of them have been acquitted. And this year, "traitors" began to receive maximum sentences of 20 years in prison. At the same time, unfounded detentions continue throughout the peninsula, and the judicial conveyor belt is gaining momentum. 

"The first two cases of treason were heard a year before the full-scale invasion," a Crimean human rights activist told CEMAAT on condition of anonymity. "Before that, this article was considered 'exotic', and local judges had no such practice. Then, for two years, we watched as the number of such cases gradually increased, but they were still few. And since last year, there has been a boom — not a week has gone by without cases of treason being heard in the courts. And now we see that this flow is not stopping," says my interlocutor. 

All hearings in these cases are held in closed session. No outside observer can verify how convincing the prosecution's evidence is, how consistent the witnesses are, and therefore how fair the verdict is. The occupiers even conceal the names of the defendants, and to date, less than half of the victims of these prosecutions have been identified.

The example of the aforementioned Lyudmila Kolesnikova illustrates this secrecy well. Until 2022, she worked for the Yalta police, and after the full-scale invasion, she went to Ireland as a Ukrainian refugee. In the summer of 2024, she had to return to Crimea because her mother had died. Lyudmila was arrested right at the funeral. She was accused of treason when a transaction for €25 was found on her phone — for two Ukrposhta stamps featuring a Russian military ship. 

Lyudmila Kolesnikova (photo from the Telegram channel "Support for Lyudmila Kolesnikova")

In addition to the blatant fabrication of cases, there is another reason for the "secrecy" of the hearings. Human rights activists explain that only "trusted" collaborator judges are allowed to hear such cases, and a certain reputation among Crimeans does not guarantee their safety. For example, Judge Alla Khinevich in the case against Crimean Tatar politician Lenur Islyamov completely ignored the fact of torture of a witness. Sergey Pogrebnyak did the same in the case against Nariman Celâl and the Akhtemov brothers - not only that, but the judge also openly condoned the rudeness of the FSB witnesses and prompted them with answers. And Judge Natalia Kulinska, in the case against journalist and human rights activist Irina Danilovich, allowed lawyers to question only one of sixteen witnesses, and then ignored the proven fact that the police officer had lied. 

Another name that Crimean human rights defenders immediately mention in connection with the "epidemic of betrayal" is Oksana Senedzhuk. In the spring of 2024, the 58-year-old scientist from Sevastopol was sentenced to 15 years in prison for allegedly monitoring Russian military ships and passing information to Ukraine. 

Oksana Senedzhuk in the courtroom of the occupation court

"She acted silently and inconspicuously, like a spy during the Cold War, observing strategic objects and transmitting secret information through encrypted channels to her Ukrainian curators," Russian propaganda media wrote about Senedzhuk. However, they do not specify what military secrets a philologist by education could have seen in the Sevastopol harbor: after all, all the remnants of the Black Sea Fleet — before they were moved to Novorossiysk — were there in full view of the entire city. There are also no explanations regarding the "encrypted channels." It's much simpler than that, say Oksana's relatives. She never hid her pro-Ukrainian stance, and since 2022, she has also been openly outraged by the full-scale invasion.

Olga Skrypnyk, head of the Crimean Human Rights Group, calls the evidence in treason cases blatantly absurd. "It could be anything. From a €10 donation to simply watching Zelensky's interview or going to Sevastopol where the Black Sea Fleet ships were moored. Or it could be a completely fabricated case, where the FSB themselves buried explosives, then brought you there, forced you to dig them up, and filmed it," the human rights activist said in an interview with the TV channel Nastoyashchee Vremya. 

It is impossible to verify the accuracy and validity of the allegations. It is also impossible to obtain comments or even the position of the defendants in such cases. Lawyers, as soon as they take on a case, sign a non-disclosure agreement, which completely deprives them of the opportunity to make any public assessment of the process. Therefore, Russian "fighters on the invisible front" are free to fantasize about any version of any events. 

One thing can be said with almost certainty: there will be a "Ukrainian trace" in every such case. As noted by human rights defenders of the "Crimean process," in almost 90 percent of cases, the charges are related to working for Ukrainian special services, and court verdicts are intensively covered by federal and regional propaganda channels. 

"Everything is done to intimidate everyone as much as possible. And to be honest, they are succeeding. I love photography, but now I don't even think about taking my camera with me when I walk my dog. Once, I couldn't resist and took a photo of a fantastic sunset over the city from the bus window with my phone. I then had to spend a long time explaining to the old lady opposite that I was not a spy," says a resident of Simferopol. 

This is precisely the goal of the "epidemic of treason," according to some human rights activists. Intimidating the civilian population helps to tighten the already strict control over the occupied territory and, at the same time, to purge it of potentially disloyal residents.