“It was his first combat mission.” How Russia labeled a prisoner from the 48th Special Forces Battalion a “terrorist” for serving in the Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion
Source: Grati
Author: Anastasia Moskvichova
Serhiy Vorsenyuk, a rifleman with the 48th Separate Assault Battalion, was taken prisoner near the village of Storozheve in Donetsk Oblast, which, according to the DeepState project, was occupied by Russian forces on December 25, 2024.
However, despite the fact that the Third Geneva Convention prohibits parties to armed conflicts from prosecuting enemy combatants solely for their participation in the war, in October 2025, Russia sentenced Vorsenyuk to 17 years in prison, accusing him of involvement with the Noman Chelebidzhihan Crimean Tatar Battalion, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. The 48th Separate Infantry Battalion did indeed appear in public communications under this name, although, according to the battalion itself, the process of officially naming it after Chelebidzhihan had not been finalized at the General Staff level.
Human rights activists have documented dozens of similar cases in which Russia sentences prisoners of war to long prison terms solely for serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Their trials are usually held behind closed doors, with only the sentences being made public.
“Grati” reports on what is currently known about this situation.
“He didn’t even fight”
Before mobilization, Serhiy Vorsenyuk lived in Polonne in the Khmelnytskyi region; by trade he is a carpenter, but he worked in a warehouse. Vorsenyuk’s wife, Lyubov Sudakova, told “Hrati” about this. She says: Serhiy encountered a mobilization team from the Territorial Defense Command on his way to the bank, and that’s how he ended up in the army.
He was assigned to the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Ground Forces and, after training, was sent to the Donetsk region.
According to Lyubov, on December 22, 2024, Serhiy and his comrades took up a position near the village of Storozheve in the Volnovakha district, and as early as December 24, she was informed that her husband was considered missing in action.
“He didn’t even get to fight. It was his first combat mission; they were surrounded there. Then a video surfaced: one of his comrades said that they had been holed up in some two-story building for two days, then they were surrounded, and they had to surrender or face being shot—it was one or the other,” Lyubov recounts.
She found out that her husband was a prisoner of war about a month after she lost contact with him: Serhiy was recognized in one of the videos that the Russians posted on social media.
“Someone saw it on TikTok. It spread very quickly after that. I was in the hospital at the time; my relatives called and told me that Serhiy was a prisoner of war,” the woman recalls.
You can still find video clips featuring Serhiy Vorsenyuk online. It was filmed against the backdrop of an earthen wall or embankment. The man first speaks in Ukrainian, saying that he is fine, and then—apparently at someone’s request—switches to Russian and talks about a lack of military training and experience, which is why they were unable to hold their position.
Videos featuring Ukrainian prisoners of war, similar in content and format, are being circulated by Russians on TikTok and a number of Telegram channels that criticize Ukraine’s mobilization and call on Ukrainians not to fight or to surrender.
The Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War The Third Geneva Convention of 1929, recognized by both Ukraine and Russia, provides a number of guarantees for combatants—military personnel of the warring parties. In particular, it guarantees prisoners of war humane treatment and prohibits the parties from prosecuting enemy military personnel for participating in hostilities, provided they have not committed war crimes.
Russia, however, often simply ignores the provisions of international humanitarian law or engages in semantic manipulation: it judges the actions of combatants under its own domestic counterterrorism legislation, which allows charges to be brought in the absence of anyevidence of a crime or signs of preparation for one, but solely based on investigators’ belief that the individual belongs to a group that the Russian Federation has included on its list of extremist organizations.
This is what happened to the captured soldier Serhiy Vorsenyuk, who was put on trial for serving in the 48th Separate Assault Battalion.
The court in Rostov-on-Don
The Russians transferred Serhiy Vorsenyuk’s case to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don in late April 2025. It was heard by Judge Ilya Bezgub, who had previously worked at the Volgograd Garrison Court and, before that, at the Sevastopol Garrison Court, to which he was transferred in 2015, shortly after the start of the Russian occupation of Crimea.
Ilya Bezgub, judge of the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Photo from the “Judges of Russia”
website
As noted on the court’s website, on October 9, 2025, Judge Bezgub handed down a guilty verdict against Serhiy Vorsenyuk. Vorsenyuk’s wife says the case was heard behind closed doors, and she only learned of the outcome of the hearing through social media.
Specifically, as reported on October 16 by representatives of the “DPR” group, Sergei Vorsenyuk was found guilty of participating in the activities of an organization that Russia considers terrorist (Part 2 of Article 205.Article 205, Part 5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and for undergoing training for the purpose of terrorist activity under Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, sentencing him to 17 years of imprisonment, with the first 3 years to be served in prison and the remainder in a strict-regime penal colony.
The report states that the FSB Directorate for the Eastern Military District and the FSB Directorate in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast established that, allegedly in 2024, Ukrainian citizen Serhiy Vorsenyuk, at the “Legion,” located in the Rivne region, “voluntarily joined the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the ‘Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion Named After Noman Chelebidzhihan,’” which the Russian Supreme Court designated as a terrorist organization in 2022.
Furthermore, according to this information, Vorsenyuk underwent military training and participated in combat operations in the Donetsk region as a rifleman. At the same time, the report contains no information indicating that the Ukrainian soldier committed any acts that could be classified as war crimes.
The court’s website states that the Ukrainian is currently appealing the verdict in the appellate court.
According to Lyubov Sudakova, Serhiy Vorsenyuk was initially sent to the Donetsk pretrial detention center in Russian-occupied territory, then transferred to Taganrog, and from there to Rostov-on-Don, and is currently being held at Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 in Novocherkask, Rostov Oblast.
This pretrial detention center is known as a place where the Russians hold many prisoners of war and civilians from Ukraine who were abducted in the occupied territories. In particular, convicts are sent to Novocherkassk before being transported to penal colonies to serve their sentences.
Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 in Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, Russian Federation. Photo: Anton Naumlyuk, Grati
Meanwhile, Lyubov Sudakova notes that even despite the Russian court’s verdict, she still cannot obtain official confirmation from the International Committee of the Red Cross that her husband is being held captive. According to her, the international organization explains this by stating that it does not have access to Russian detention facilities.
On March 10, 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree adding Ilya Bezgub, a judge of the Southern District Military Court, to the sanctions list, following a decision by the National Security and Defense Council. In addition to him, the list includes 40 other judges who handed down illegal sentences imprisoning prisoners of war, as well as supported and justified Russian aggression.
A unit was formed, but no name was assigned: what is known about the Chelebidzhihan Battalion
The Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion is the unofficial, though publicly used, name for the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is currently fighting as part of the Ground Forces (previously part of the Territorial Defense Forces).
Noman Chelebidzhihan was a Crimean Tatar cultural and political figure, one of the organizers of the first Kurultai, the first head of government of the Crimean People’s Republic proclaimed in 1917, and the first mufti of the Muslims of Crimea, Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus.
The 48th OSHB was officially established in August 2023. The unit grew out of the Noman Chelebidzhihan Territorial Community Volunteer Unit, which was formed in the Kyiv region shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and later became the fire support company of the 251st Battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces, commanded by Lenur Islyamov, a businessman and CEO of the ATR television channel.
At various times, the battalion’s fighters saw action, in particular, in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia regions, and underwent several rotations in the Donetsk region: while still part of the fire support company, they participated in the defense of Bakhmut, and later—already as the 48th Special Operations Battalion—in the battles for Staromayorske, Zolota Nyva, Shakhtarske, and Blahodatne, and they joined the liberation of the village of Novy Komar in early December 2024.
“After that [roughly from August through December], we defended Makarivka and Storozheve. We were effectively surrounded there. We held out until the end of December, essentially ‘wearing ourselves down’… It turned out that there were no longer any Ukrainian troops to our right or left; one of the groups [of the 48th] battalion found itself under siege, and there was no logistical way [to help them]. “The guys fought heroically while surrounded,” Lenur Islyamov told “Gratam” in a comment.
He led the unit until January 2025, when he took command of the 109th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, within which the 2nd Rifle Battalion named after Devlet Giray, the Crimean Khan who in 1751 led a campaign against Moscow and almost completely burned it down, was formed; he was demobilized earlier this year due to reaching the mandatory retirement age.
“Everyone should do what they can, to the best of their ability. I’ve done my part; I’ve served my time. Someone else might have done better. But still, putting together an entire battalion from civilians—that’s what the 48th OSHB team did. That’s what a team of people who care did. We made history. We did not tarnish the name of Noman Chelebidzhihan,” Islyamov remarked.
As previously explained to “Gratam” by the 48th OSHB, Major Lenur Islyamov named the battalion “in honor of Noman Chelebidzhihan” via an internal order and initiated the renaming procedure at the General Staff level. However, this process was never completed following a change in command.
Islyamov had spoken of his intention to create a Crimean volunteer battalion as early as 2015, after the civil blockade of occupied Crimea began. At that time, protesters blocked the roads leading to three checkpoints connecting mainland Ukraine with the Russian-occupied peninsula and prevented goods intended for sale from passing through. At the start of the protest, representatives of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and local authorities from the Kherson region traveled to the village of Chongar in the Kherson region—where one of the aforementioned checkpoints was located—to show their support for the protesters.
In February 2016, while there was still no official decision from Ukraine regarding the battalion, Lenur Islyamov registered the “Asker Civil Formation for the Protection of Public Order and the State Border,” which began participating in joint patrols with Ukrainian border guards along the administrative border.
In November of that same year, power lines were blown up in the Kherson region, leading to a blackout in Crimea. The Russians blamed the explosion on fighters from the “Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion”—which had not yet been officially registered at the time—and its leader, Lenur Islyamov. Russia subsequently sentenced Islyamov in absentia to 18 years in prison. In addition to sabotage, he was accused of creating an “armed group not provided for by federal law” and of “calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, committed through the media.”
On June 1, 2022, the Supreme Court of Russia granted a petition filed by the General Prosecutor’s Office to designate the “Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion Named After Noman Chelebidzhihan” as a terrorist organization.
Similarly, at various times, a number of other Ukrainian units officially operating within the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the National Guard—including “Azov” and “Aidar”—have been added to the corresponding list. Russia, disregarding the norms of international law, considers the very fact of serving in these units to be terrorist activity and, as a result, prosecutes Ukrainian military personnel in court.
However, a distinctive feature of the Russian cases regarding alleged “participation in the Crimean Tatar battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhihan” is that Russia is staging show trials not only against prisoners of war, as well as civilians abducted during the occupation who, according to Russian investigators, participated in peaceful civil blockade protests in Crimea or otherwise supported the protesters. There is also information about the persecution, on such charges, of journalists who cover or have covered topics related to the occupation of Crimea.
“[Since 2022] mass arrests of representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people have begun in the occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, primarily targeting members of the Kherson Regional Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars and local Crimean Tatar Mejlis, socially active individuals, taxi drivers, and entrepreneurs,” Eskender Bariev, head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center (CTRC),
told “Gratam.”
For example, in 2023, the Russians detained two Crimean Tatars—Asan Dursunov and Eldar Kestan in the occupied part of the Kherson region and subsequently convicted them on charges of involvement with the Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion; and in 2024, as part of the same case, they convicted Nariman Derman.
According to Eskender Bariev, a trend has been observed since 2024: when handing down sentences, Russian judges have been imposing longer prison terms.
Dozens of persecuted prisoners of war and civilians
The KRC has documented at least 73 detentions on charges of alleged participation in the Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion since 2014: 21 of them in Russian-occupied Crimea, 52—in the occupied Kherson region after February 24, 2022.
According to the organization, of these 73 people, 40 have been sentenced; two of them have already served their prison terms, and one—60-year-old Crimean Tatar Rustem Virati—died last year in a penal colony in the city of Dmitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia.
“Virtually all of them are being tried under the article on participation in an illegal armed group acting for purposes contrary to the interests of the Russian Federation — Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — but in some cases, the case files also include charges of participation in the activities of a terrorist organization under Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,” the KRC states.
Among the cases documented by the organization, only two specifically concern prisoners of war from the 48th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade: these are the cases of Serhiy Yatskov, who was sentenced in Rostov-on-Don to 20 years in prison, and Seiran Asanov, whose trials, according to the KRC, are currently ongoing.
Meanwhile, the Media Initiative for Human Rights has information on 19 prisoners of war from the 48th Separate Helicopter Brigade who have faced criminal prosecution in Russia simply for belonging to this unit and serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For some of them, such as Serhiy Vorsenyuk, sentences have already been handed down, at least in the first instance (in all cases, the terms range from 14 to 20 years in prison), while other cases are still pending in the Southern District Military Court.
Serhiy Vorsenyuk in a Russian court. Photo from the Telegram channel “DPR Defense Headquarters”
As Tetyana Katrychenko, the organization’s chairwoman, told “Gratam,” it is true that in 2022–2023, when Russia, invoking anti-terrorism legislation, was just beginning to develop the illegal practice of persecuting Ukrainian prisoners of war in cases involving “Azov” and “Aidar” fighters, people were sentenced to relatively shorter terms—5 to 7 years.
At that time, she said, there was a tendency to hear cases involving large numbers of defendants. Now, Russian judges are hearing cases for each prisoner separately and handing down harsher sentences.
“And now the number of people they are prosecuting has increased so much that the Russians do not have sufficient resources to transport them to courtrooms and have begun holding remote court hearings via videoconference,” the human rights activist notes.
Depending on their sentences, prisoners from the 48th Separate Naval Infantry Battalion and other Ukrainian units—service in which Russia has criminalized—are being sent to serve their sentences in maximum-security penal colonies or specialized prisons — places of confinement with even harsher conditions.
According to the International Institute for Human Rights (IIHR), there is currently no information available on battalion fighters who were convicted but later returned as part of a prisoner exchange.
This material was prepared with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It represents the authors’ views and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Author: Anastasia Moskvichova
Serhiy Vorsenyuk, a rifleman with the 48th Separate Assault Battalion, was taken prisoner near the village of Storozheve in Donetsk Oblast, which, according to the DeepState project, was occupied by Russian forces on December 25, 2024.
However, despite the fact that the Third Geneva Convention prohibits parties to armed conflicts from prosecuting enemy combatants solely for their participation in the war, in October 2025, Russia sentenced Vorsenyuk to 17 years in prison, accusing him of involvement with the Noman Chelebidzhihan Crimean Tatar Battalion, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in Russia. The 48th Separate Infantry Battalion did indeed appear in public communications under this name, although, according to the battalion itself, the process of officially naming it after Chelebidzhihan had not been finalized at the General Staff level.
Human rights activists have documented dozens of similar cases in which Russia sentences prisoners of war to long prison terms solely for serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Their trials are usually held behind closed doors, with only the sentences being made public.
“Grati” reports on what is currently known about this situation.
“He didn’t even fight”
Before mobilization, Serhiy Vorsenyuk lived in Polonne in the Khmelnytskyi region; by trade he is a carpenter, but he worked in a warehouse. Vorsenyuk’s wife, Lyubov Sudakova, told “Hrati” about this. She says: Serhiy encountered a mobilization team from the Territorial Defense Command on his way to the bank, and that’s how he ended up in the army.
He was assigned to the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Ground Forces and, after training, was sent to the Donetsk region.
According to Lyubov, on December 22, 2024, Serhiy and his comrades took up a position near the village of Storozheve in the Volnovakha district, and as early as December 24, she was informed that her husband was considered missing in action.
“He didn’t even get to fight. It was his first combat mission; they were surrounded there. Then a video surfaced: one of his comrades said that they had been holed up in some two-story building for two days, then they were surrounded, and they had to surrender or face being shot—it was one or the other,” Lyubov recounts.
She found out that her husband was a prisoner of war about a month after she lost contact with him: Serhiy was recognized in one of the videos that the Russians posted on social media.
“Someone saw it on TikTok. It spread very quickly after that. I was in the hospital at the time; my relatives called and told me that Serhiy was a prisoner of war,” the woman recalls.
You can still find video clips featuring Serhiy Vorsenyuk online. It was filmed against the backdrop of an earthen wall or embankment. The man first speaks in Ukrainian, saying that he is fine, and then—apparently at someone’s request—switches to Russian and talks about a lack of military training and experience, which is why they were unable to hold their position.
Videos featuring Ukrainian prisoners of war, similar in content and format, are being circulated by Russians on TikTok and a number of Telegram channels that criticize Ukraine’s mobilization and call on Ukrainians not to fight or to surrender.
The Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War The Third Geneva Convention of 1929, recognized by both Ukraine and Russia, provides a number of guarantees for combatants—military personnel of the warring parties. In particular, it guarantees prisoners of war humane treatment and prohibits the parties from prosecuting enemy military personnel for participating in hostilities, provided they have not committed war crimes.
Russia, however, often simply ignores the provisions of international humanitarian law or engages in semantic manipulation: it judges the actions of combatants under its own domestic counterterrorism legislation, which allows charges to be brought in the absence of anyevidence of a crime or signs of preparation for one, but solely based on investigators’ belief that the individual belongs to a group that the Russian Federation has included on its list of extremist organizations.
This is what happened to the captured soldier Serhiy Vorsenyuk, who was put on trial for serving in the 48th Separate Assault Battalion.
The court in Rostov-on-Don
The Russians transferred Serhiy Vorsenyuk’s case to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don in late April 2025. It was heard by Judge Ilya Bezgub, who had previously worked at the Volgograd Garrison Court and, before that, at the Sevastopol Garrison Court, to which he was transferred in 2015, shortly after the start of the Russian occupation of Crimea.
Ilya Bezgub, judge of the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Photo from the “Judges of Russia”
website
As noted on the court’s website, on October 9, 2025, Judge Bezgub handed down a guilty verdict against Serhiy Vorsenyuk. Vorsenyuk’s wife says the case was heard behind closed doors, and she only learned of the outcome of the hearing through social media.
Specifically, as reported on October 16 by representatives of the “DPR” group, Sergei Vorsenyuk was found guilty of participating in the activities of an organization that Russia considers terrorist (Part 2 of Article 205.Article 205, Part 5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and for undergoing training for the purpose of terrorist activity under Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, sentencing him to 17 years of imprisonment, with the first 3 years to be served in prison and the remainder in a strict-regime penal colony.
The report states that the FSB Directorate for the Eastern Military District and the FSB Directorate in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast established that, allegedly in 2024, Ukrainian citizen Serhiy Vorsenyuk, at the “Legion,” located in the Rivne region, “voluntarily joined the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the ‘Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion Named After Noman Chelebidzhihan,’” which the Russian Supreme Court designated as a terrorist organization in 2022.
Furthermore, according to this information, Vorsenyuk underwent military training and participated in combat operations in the Donetsk region as a rifleman. At the same time, the report contains no information indicating that the Ukrainian soldier committed any acts that could be classified as war crimes.
The court’s website states that the Ukrainian is currently appealing the verdict in the appellate court.
According to Lyubov Sudakova, Serhiy Vorsenyuk was initially sent to the Donetsk pretrial detention center in Russian-occupied territory, then transferred to Taganrog, and from there to Rostov-on-Don, and is currently being held at Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 in Novocherkask, Rostov Oblast.
This pretrial detention center is known as a place where the Russians hold many prisoners of war and civilians from Ukraine who were abducted in the occupied territories. In particular, convicts are sent to Novocherkassk before being transported to penal colonies to serve their sentences.
Pretrial Detention Center No. 3 in Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, Russian Federation. Photo: Anton Naumlyuk, Grati
Meanwhile, Lyubov Sudakova notes that even despite the Russian court’s verdict, she still cannot obtain official confirmation from the International Committee of the Red Cross that her husband is being held captive. According to her, the international organization explains this by stating that it does not have access to Russian detention facilities.
On March 10, 2026, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed a decree adding Ilya Bezgub, a judge of the Southern District Military Court, to the sanctions list, following a decision by the National Security and Defense Council. In addition to him, the list includes 40 other judges who handed down illegal sentences imprisoning prisoners of war, as well as supported and justified Russian aggression.
A unit was formed, but no name was assigned: what is known about the Chelebidzhihan Battalion
The Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion is the unofficial, though publicly used, name for the 48th Separate Assault Battalion of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is currently fighting as part of the Ground Forces (previously part of the Territorial Defense Forces).
Noman Chelebidzhihan was a Crimean Tatar cultural and political figure, one of the organizers of the first Kurultai, the first head of government of the Crimean People’s Republic proclaimed in 1917, and the first mufti of the Muslims of Crimea, Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus.
The 48th OSHB was officially established in August 2023. The unit grew out of the Noman Chelebidzhihan Territorial Community Volunteer Unit, which was formed in the Kyiv region shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, and later became the fire support company of the 251st Battalion of the Territorial Defense Forces, commanded by Lenur Islyamov, a businessman and CEO of the ATR television channel.
At various times, the battalion’s fighters saw action, in particular, in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia regions, and underwent several rotations in the Donetsk region: while still part of the fire support company, they participated in the defense of Bakhmut, and later—already as the 48th Special Operations Battalion—in the battles for Staromayorske, Zolota Nyva, Shakhtarske, and Blahodatne, and they joined the liberation of the village of Novy Komar in early December 2024.
“After that [roughly from August through December], we defended Makarivka and Storozheve. We were effectively surrounded there. We held out until the end of December, essentially ‘wearing ourselves down’… It turned out that there were no longer any Ukrainian troops to our right or left; one of the groups [of the 48th] battalion found itself under siege, and there was no logistical way [to help them]. “The guys fought heroically while surrounded,” Lenur Islyamov told “Gratam” in a comment.
He led the unit until January 2025, when he took command of the 109th Separate Territorial Defense Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, within which the 2nd Rifle Battalion named after Devlet Giray, the Crimean Khan who in 1751 led a campaign against Moscow and almost completely burned it down, was formed; he was demobilized earlier this year due to reaching the mandatory retirement age.
“Everyone should do what they can, to the best of their ability. I’ve done my part; I’ve served my time. Someone else might have done better. But still, putting together an entire battalion from civilians—that’s what the 48th OSHB team did. That’s what a team of people who care did. We made history. We did not tarnish the name of Noman Chelebidzhihan,” Islyamov remarked.
As previously explained to “Gratam” by the 48th OSHB, Major Lenur Islyamov named the battalion “in honor of Noman Chelebidzhihan” via an internal order and initiated the renaming procedure at the General Staff level. However, this process was never completed following a change in command.
Islyamov had spoken of his intention to create a Crimean volunteer battalion as early as 2015, after the civil blockade of occupied Crimea began. At that time, protesters blocked the roads leading to three checkpoints connecting mainland Ukraine with the Russian-occupied peninsula and prevented goods intended for sale from passing through. At the start of the protest, representatives of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People and local authorities from the Kherson region traveled to the village of Chongar in the Kherson region—where one of the aforementioned checkpoints was located—to show their support for the protesters.
In February 2016, while there was still no official decision from Ukraine regarding the battalion, Lenur Islyamov registered the “Asker Civil Formation for the Protection of Public Order and the State Border,” which began participating in joint patrols with Ukrainian border guards along the administrative border.
In November of that same year, power lines were blown up in the Kherson region, leading to a blackout in Crimea. The Russians blamed the explosion on fighters from the “Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion”—which had not yet been officially registered at the time—and its leader, Lenur Islyamov. Russia subsequently sentenced Islyamov in absentia to 18 years in prison. In addition to sabotage, he was accused of creating an “armed group not provided for by federal law” and of “calls for actions aimed at violating the territorial integrity of the Russian Federation, committed through the media.”
On June 1, 2022, the Supreme Court of Russia granted a petition filed by the General Prosecutor’s Office to designate the “Crimean Tatar Volunteer Battalion Named After Noman Chelebidzhihan” as a terrorist organization.
Similarly, at various times, a number of other Ukrainian units officially operating within the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the National Guard—including “Azov” and “Aidar”—have been added to the corresponding list. Russia, disregarding the norms of international law, considers the very fact of serving in these units to be terrorist activity and, as a result, prosecutes Ukrainian military personnel in court.
However, a distinctive feature of the Russian cases regarding alleged “participation in the Crimean Tatar battalion named after Noman Chelebidzhihan” is that Russia is staging show trials not only against prisoners of war, as well as civilians abducted during the occupation who, according to Russian investigators, participated in peaceful civil blockade protests in Crimea or otherwise supported the protesters. There is also information about the persecution, on such charges, of journalists who cover or have covered topics related to the occupation of Crimea.
“[Since 2022] mass arrests of representatives of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people have begun in the occupied territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, primarily targeting members of the Kherson Regional Mejlis of the Crimean Tatars and local Crimean Tatar Mejlis, socially active individuals, taxi drivers, and entrepreneurs,” Eskender Bariev, head of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center (CTRC),
told “Gratam.”
For example, in 2023, the Russians detained two Crimean Tatars—Asan Dursunov and Eldar Kestan in the occupied part of the Kherson region and subsequently convicted them on charges of involvement with the Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion; and in 2024, as part of the same case, they convicted Nariman Derman.
According to Eskender Bariev, a trend has been observed since 2024: when handing down sentences, Russian judges have been imposing longer prison terms.
Dozens of persecuted prisoners of war and civilians
The KRC has documented at least 73 detentions on charges of alleged participation in the Noman Chelebidzhihan Battalion since 2014: 21 of them in Russian-occupied Crimea, 52—in the occupied Kherson region after February 24, 2022.
According to the organization, of these 73 people, 40 have been sentenced; two of them have already served their prison terms, and one—60-year-old Crimean Tatar Rustem Virati—died last year in a penal colony in the city of Dmitrovgrad, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia.
“Virtually all of them are being tried under the article on participation in an illegal armed group acting for purposes contrary to the interests of the Russian Federation — Part 2 of Article 208 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — but in some cases, the case files also include charges of participation in the activities of a terrorist organization under Article 205.5 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation,” the KRC states.
Among the cases documented by the organization, only two specifically concern prisoners of war from the 48th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade: these are the cases of Serhiy Yatskov, who was sentenced in Rostov-on-Don to 20 years in prison, and Seiran Asanov, whose trials, according to the KRC, are currently ongoing.
Meanwhile, the Media Initiative for Human Rights has information on 19 prisoners of war from the 48th Separate Helicopter Brigade who have faced criminal prosecution in Russia simply for belonging to this unit and serving in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For some of them, such as Serhiy Vorsenyuk, sentences have already been handed down, at least in the first instance (in all cases, the terms range from 14 to 20 years in prison), while other cases are still pending in the Southern District Military Court.
Serhiy Vorsenyuk in a Russian court. Photo from the Telegram channel “DPR Defense Headquarters”
As Tetyana Katrychenko, the organization’s chairwoman, told “Gratam,” it is true that in 2022–2023, when Russia, invoking anti-terrorism legislation, was just beginning to develop the illegal practice of persecuting Ukrainian prisoners of war in cases involving “Azov” and “Aidar” fighters, people were sentenced to relatively shorter terms—5 to 7 years.
At that time, she said, there was a tendency to hear cases involving large numbers of defendants. Now, Russian judges are hearing cases for each prisoner separately and handing down harsher sentences.
“And now the number of people they are prosecuting has increased so much that the Russians do not have sufficient resources to transport them to courtrooms and have begun holding remote court hearings via videoconference,” the human rights activist notes.
Depending on their sentences, prisoners from the 48th Separate Naval Infantry Battalion and other Ukrainian units—service in which Russia has criminalized—are being sent to serve their sentences in maximum-security penal colonies or specialized prisons — places of confinement with even harsher conditions.
According to the International Institute for Human Rights (IIHR), there is currently no information available on battalion fighters who were convicted but later returned as part of a prisoner exchange.
This material was prepared with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation. It represents the authors’ views and does not necessarily reflect the position of the International Renaissance Foundation.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.