The Third Court of Appeal in Sochi considered an appeal against the verdict of a Crimean court concerning Niyara Ersambetova, a resident of the Nizhnegorsk district, who was sentenced last year to 15 years’ imprisonment for her alleged links to the Ukrainian partisan movement ‘Atesh’ and for passing on information to them about a fuel depot.

Information containing the defendant’s personal details was concealed on the Russian court’s website, and the hearing itself was held in camera due to the presence in the case file of documents classified as ‘state secrets’. The decision to uphold the court’s ruling was handed down by Russian judge Kliment Sutyagin, who previously worked in the security services of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. This fact, together with the very participation in the trial of a judge who is a national of one of the parties to the armed conflict, in proceedings against a resident of the occupied territories accused of collaborating with the other party to the conflict, calls into question the court’s impartiality.

In the court of first instance, the case was also heard by a judge whose independence and impartiality were seriously called into question — the verdict in the case was handed down by Judge Natalya Kulinskaya, against whom two criminal cases have been brought by the Ukrainian law enforcement authorities and who demonstrated clear dependence on the FSB during the trial of human rights activist and journalist Irina Danilovich. Over the past year, Judge Kulinskaya has already handed down convictions for high treason against the abducted Crimeans Ismail Shemshedinov and Alexander Osadchy.

Also noteworthy is the complete disregard for the fact that Niyara Ersambetova has two minor children in her care, whom she has been raising alone. Neither the court of first instance nor the court of appeal took this circumstance into account or deferred the enforcement of the sentence until the children reached the age of majority. This indicates a harsher approach by judges to criminal cases involving women accused of treason.

It should be recalled that last year, in its report on the rise in the number of criminal prosecutions against women, the “Crimean Process” noted that such prosecutions serve as a tool for suppressing resistance to the occupation, as out of the 31 cases analysed, in at least 26 instances the prosecutions of women were linked to their support for Ukraine.