Women and teenagers among those being tried by Russians for treason and espionage in Ukraine’s occupied territories
Women and children are among those being abducted and prosecuted for being "spies" and "traitors" in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. The average sentence is thirteen and a half years, Russian media outlet Vazhnye Istorii (Important Stories) has reported.
Source: Vazhnye Istorii
Details: Vazhnye Istorii reports that in the three years since the Russian occupation, at least 190 sentences for "treason", "espionage" and "confidential cooperation with foreigners" have been handed down to local residents in the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts by courts set up by the Russian occupying authorities.
Foreigners – i.e. Ukrainian citizens – are prosecuted for espionage. Those who have obtained Russian citizenship (often because they were forced to) are tried on charges of treason.
Quote from Vazhnye Istorii: "Between July and September 2025, sentences were handed down for these offences every three days. The average prison term is thirteen and a half years. At least two life sentences were handed down. Women represent 28% of those convicted. At least eight teenagers have been sentenced. At least five people who were abducted have died in prison. We only examined public data, so the actual numbers are much higher."
Details: Vazhnye Istorii reported that before the war, there were no more than 16 convictions per year for treason (12-20 years' imprisonment or life) and espionage (10-20 years' imprisonment) in Russia. In 2022, Russia added a new offence to its Criminal Code – "Confidential cooperation with a foreign state or international or foreign organisation" – which carries a prison sentence of three to eight years.
At least 774 people have been convicted of these three offences by courts in Russia and the occupied territories between the start of the war and July 2025.
Vazhnye Istorii reports that anyone opposing the occupation of Ukrainian territories is abducted by the Russians.
One of them is Iryna Horobtsova, who was abducted from her home in Kherson in May 2022. She was held in a Crimean pre-trial detention centre without any contact with the outside world. In August 2024, the Russian-installed Kherson Oblast Court sentenced Horobtsova to ten and a half years in a general-regime colony on espionage charges. She was accused of gathering strategically significant data on Russian Armed Forces units in Kherson Oblast and allegedly passing it on to an officer of Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.
An unnamed woman from Enerhodar and 73-year-old Oleksandr Markov from Zaporizhzhia Oblast were sentenced to 14 years in prison on treason charges for allegedly transferring small amounts of money to "accounts of a foreign bank used by the Ukrainian intelligence services".
At least two minors are known to have been convicted of "treason", each receiving prison terms ranging from six and a half to nine years. Two of the eight teenagers (young people aged up to 19, as defined by the UN) to have been convicted are girls.
The harshest punishment was meted out to Mykyta Polozov from the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast, who was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison when he was 19.
Another teenager, 18-year-old Oleksandr Syrov from Mariupol, was sentenced on two charges, treason and espionage, as he held both Ukrainian and Russian citizenship.
Artem Kudzhanov was arrested by Russian security forces at the age of 19 and accused of gathering intelligence on Russian military units in Luhansk Oblast. In 2025, he was sentenced to 12 years in a high-security prison. His father, Ibrahim Kudzhanov, was abducted from a hospital in 2024, subjected to electric shock torture, and later given a five-and-a-half-year sentence for his alleged "involvement in a terrorist organisation".
Some of those convicted are women with several children. In the winter of 2025, 32-year-old Olena Danylenko from the village of Demianivka in Kherson Oblast was accused of treason and sentenced to twelve and a half years in prison. She has four children under 18; the youngest is five. Her brother, 24-year-old Oleh Rashchupkin, has been sentenced to 12 years for espionage.
Vazhnye Istorii underlined that the number of people who have been abducted is many times greater than the number of criminal cases.
Some civilians are brought to trial on other charges, such as forming and actively participating in a terrorist group.
The Russian human rights organisation Memorial has information on 654 Ukrainian civilians who have been subjected to persecution in the occupied territories or in Russia since the start of the full-scale war.
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