The Southern District Military Court has concluded its hearing of the criminal case against Sevastopol resident Alexander Malyarenko, who was charged with eight counts under the article on justifying terrorism and seven counts of publicly inciting extremist activity. According to a statement from the court’s press office, in April 2024, as well as during the winter and spring of 2025, the defendant posted comments in publicly accessible social media groups containing ‘justification of the activities of Ukraine’s armed formations’, and also called for violent actions against citizens of the Russian Federation. Following the hearing, the court imposed a sentence of five and a half years’ imprisonment.

It is telling that the court classified statements relating to the conduct of hostilities as justifying terrorism. In particular, the defendant was charged with endorsing: air and missile strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation; the crossing of the Russian border by Ukrainian military forces and their incursion into the Kursk Oblast; and calls for air and artillery strikes, as well as rocket and drone attacks, on the territory of Sevastopol, the Republic of Crimea and other territories of the Russian Federation.

The case revealed significant breaches of the principle of openness and public access, both in relation to the trial itself and to the pronouncement of the verdict. In particular, the court took steps to conceal information about the defendant, which made it difficult to ascertain the place and time of the pronouncement of the verdict. Furthermore, the date and time of the pronouncement of the verdict – which, under the rules of criminal procedure, must always be announced publicly – were not given sufficiently in advance (only in the evening of the day before the verdict), and the venue of the hearing was not specified on the website.

Furthermore, the court’s press office did not disclose details of the content of the text messages containing linguistic and psychological indications of the justification of terrorist acts, which precludes the possibility of ascertaining to what extent the charges actually related to ‘acknowledging the ideology and practice of terrorism as correct, deserving of support and emulation’. Nor is it possible to establish with certainty whether these statements were related to an analysis of causes or to historical events.

Particular attention is drawn to the fact that the criminal case against a resident of occupied Sevastopol was not heard in a court in the occupied territory, as required by international humanitarian law, but in the Southern District Military Court, which is located in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. The participation of the Russian judge Gurgen Dovlatbekyan in the proceedings calls into question the independence and impartiality of the court, as the case concerns the public expression of an opinion on an armed conflict in which one of the parties is the country of which the judge is a citizen, and the other is the country whose actions the defendant supported.

The case also serves as clear evidence of the claim that the Russian judicial system ignores the reality of the international armed conflict. Ukraine’s lawful and natural right to self-defence against military aggression by the Russian army is interpreted by the court as terrorist activity directed against the Russian state. Such an interpretation contradicts international understandings of terrorism, as enshrined in the Shanghai Convention.

The practice of disregarding international armed conflict is described in detail in the joint study ‘Denial of the Right to a Fair Trial as an International Crime during Russia’s War against Ukraine: Context, Practice, Law and Prospects’, which provides well-reasoned evidence that such prosecutions are aimed at justifying military aggression against Ukraine. Furthermore, the study ‘Peculiarities of the prosecution of residents of occupied territories under terrorism-related articles’ established that, over a 10-month period last year, the Southern District Military Court heard at least 14 cases concerning the justification of terrorism against residents of Crimea. In not a single case were the texts of the statements provided for an independent analysis of their compliance with the criteria for justifying terrorism.