“I begged them to finish me off”. Russia jails 5 Ukrainians from occupied Melitopol for up to 14 years over alleged terror plot, despite torture claims

According to investigators, the men organised a “terrorist underground” in the city of Melitopol in southeastern Ukraine, occupied since the early weeks of the invasion in 2022, and planned to detonate an explosives-laden vehicle near a humanitarian aid distribution point. They were charged with participation in a terrorist community and preparation for an act of international terrorism under the Russian Criminal Code. All five denied the charges.

According to the prosecution, all five men belonged to the “Union of ATO Participants of Melitopol”, led by Volodymyr Minko. The FSB, Russia’s security service, claims that Minko directed the group via messaging apps from the part Zaporizhzhia region remaining under Ukrainian control. ATO here refers to Ukraine’s “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, the official designation used for military operations in eastern Ukraine from 2014–2018.

Horlov, 37, was the only defendant who remained an active Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman when Russian forces seized Melitopol. Holubev, 46, Zuev, 44, and Zhukov, 56, were territorial defence reservists, while Petrov, 64, was a retired combat veteran. Before their detention, most of the men barely knew each other.

In early April 2022, all five were abducted by Russian security forces, according to their court testimony. Initially, the Ukrainians were held in underground prisons in Melitopol, mostly handcuffed and hooded, where they were beaten and subjected to electric shocks. Ihor Horlov testified that when threatened with torture of his family, he attempted suicide by cutting his throat. Doctors managed to save his life.

“I decided to take my own life. I couldn’t hang myself, so I took a tin can and cut my wrists,” Horlov told the court, describing his suicide attempt.

“It was very cold. I rolled up my jacket sleeves and slashed my wrist, but there was no blood. I repeated this several times without success. Then I remembered you need to cut along the inner part of the elbow joint, but I didn’t have enough strength. So I took the tin can and slashed my throat. Blood was flowing, but I couldn’t reach the artery—the tin can was a bit crooked. Then I pulled a nail from the wall, it had a hook at the end where it had bent when hammered in. With this hook I tore open my throat and reached the carotid artery. I remember blood spurting onto my hand. At that moment the door opened. A person came in, saw this and immediately rushed out. Then I blinked—I was lying at the entrance with people around me. I blinked again—they were pulling me on a stretcher. I tried to move, to get up. They told me: ‘Calm down.’ I begged them to finish me off.”

According to the Ukrainians, on April 19, they were transported to annexed Crimea, where their detention was officially processed and they were formally arrested. Later, they were transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo detention centre, a facility controlled by the FSB.

The primary evidence consisted of messenger app conversations found on their phones. Russian investigators claimed the accused coordinated activities with local territorial defence leader Volodymyr Minko. However, the conversations included in case materials contained no discussion of terrorist attacks—they primarily concerned Russian troop movements and everyday problems.

The case also includes confessions signed by the defendants during initial interrogations. The defence maintained these could not be considered valid evidence as they were obtained under torture.

During their time in custody, two of the men—Horlov and Zuev—lost their fathers, while Petrov’s daughter, who was just over two years old when he was abducted, died due to lack of adequate medical care in occupied Melitopol.

The case was submitted to court in April 2023. The proceedings were mostly open until late October last year, when they were closed to the public. Court officials told Mediazona this was at the prosecutor’s request due to “examination of evidence that should not become public knowledge”—specifically, the defendants’ correspondence and technical details about improvised explosive device construction.

The following day, the same court closed proceedings against 18 Ukrainians accused of serving in the Aidar Battalion, also at the prosecutor’s request. The state prosecutor justified the request by stating that “this case has received wide public resonance and there are grounds to believe that the safety of trial participants and their close relatives is under threat.”

As an example, the prosecutor cited a post by Ukrainian blogger Dmitry Gordon: “We know a lot about all these and other ruscist judges. Putin’s judges are not for the first time staging show trials of Ukrainians. They will all be punished for this. We already have all the data on judges who handed down sentences to the defenders of Azovstal and other captured citizens of Ukraine.”

Horlov

Of the five defendants, only Ihor Horlov was an active Ukrainian serviceman when captured. The former navigator had transferred to an engineering battalion as a sapper shortly before the invasion, while Holubev, Zhukov and Zuev were merely territorial defence reservists, and Petrov was already retired. According to their testimony, most barely knew each other before detention.

When Russian forces entered Melitopol, Horlov found his unit had evacuated without him. He joined the territorial defence organised by Volodymyr Minko, and after Minko left, remained in the city executing his instructions. Though detained on April 6, Russian forces continued sending messages from his phone, masking his capture. His mother Iryna only learned of his abduction through Russian state media, which showed him making mechanical confessions beside a red car, supposedly planned for a bombing.

Iryna Horlova eventually escaped to Ukrainian-controlled territory, but Ihor’s father, dependent on dialysis treatment, remained behind fearing he wouldn’t survive the journey through checkpoints where Russians held refugees for days. He died shortly after.

Holubev

Andriy Holubev, 46, was detained the same day as Horlov. A well-known kung fu trainer in Melitopol who ran the “White Tiger” club and headed the city’s Kung Fu Association, he also taught 3D modeling. During the pandemic, he briefly served in the border troops before returning to teaching children and joining the territorial defence reserve.

“Andriy is a patriot of his country, and he always expressed his position openly,” his wife Olha told Mediazona. Russian forces arrived at their home on April 6, threatening to shoot him in the legs and telling his family, “If he cooperates, we’ll release him.” Holubev maintained in court that as a Buddhist since the early 1990s, his beliefs excluded violence: “For me to be accused of wanting to kill a bunch of my fellow citizens whom I’ve trained and who know my family because they were receiving humanitarian aid—it’s outrageous.”

In messages added to the case file, Volodymyr Minko explicitly wrote that Holubev “knew nothing about the plans”, he was only asked to change a tyre on the red Tavria car. Olha eventually left occupied Melitopol with their child while his elderly mother remained behind. Today, Olha publishes Ukrainian-language poems that Andriy began writing in captivity.

Zhukov

Oleksandr Zhukov, 56, was seized by Russian security forces the day after Horlov and Holubev.

“Around 5:30 I looked out the window and saw two cars near our yard and people in military uniform,” his daughter Yevhenia told Ukrainian journalists. The occupiers knocked saying, “Open up, police,” but told his children, “We won’t mock or beat him, why would we need an old man?”

Working as an electrician, Zhukov testified that his participation in territorial defence before the full-scale invasion was “passive”—he was listed as a driver in the 115th Battalion.

On February 24, he went to headquarters where he met Holubev, whom he knew only professionally; he maintained he didn’t personally know Horlov, Petrov or Zuev before detention. Despite the occupiers’ promises to his children that their father would soon return home, Zhukov was not released after questioning. A widower with adult children, he later testified in court that he had been beaten and tortured with electric shocks.

Petrov

Yuriy Petrov, 64, the oldest defendant, was detained on April 8. Having reached the maximum service age, he had retired about a year before the invasion but belonged to the same “Union of ATO Veterans.”

When arrested, his youngest daughter was just over two years old; she later died due to lack of proper medical care in occupied Melitopol; Petrov received the news while detained in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison.

In court, Petrov explained that Minko had once asked him to keep several boxes in his garage for “about ten days.” He claimed he neither knew nor asked what was inside. When more than ten days passed and Minko stopped responding, the war began. Eventually, Minko made contact again and sent Horlov, whom Petrov said he’d never met before, to collect the boxes.

In early interrogation protocols included in the case file, Petrov’s story differed markedly: he initially stated the boxes contained “military cargo” and that before transferring them to Horlov, he had opened the packaging to discover mines and explosives inside. Later, he explained he had given this testimony under torture. His wife and two other children remain in Melitopol.

Zuev

Volodymyr Zuev, 44, was the first detained, on April 1, 2022. Working for a company servicing video surveillance systems and also serving in the territorial defence reserve, he may have attracted security forces’ attention because his brother Oleksandr was a Ukrainian fighter.

“Eight armed occupiers invaded the house around six in the morning and began a very thorough search. They immediately declared they knew his brother was a ukrop and ‘terrorist’,” Oleksandr told journalists. During his first interrogation, Volodymyr stated that his brother commanded a territorial defence battalion in Melitopol.

A divorced father with a school-age daughter living abroad with her mother, Zuev left behind his elderly father, whom the security forces questioned but left alone. “Dad was left alone, bedridden without legs. There was no one even to ask to visit him. People were afraid to approach him, and Zuev’s father died,” Iryna Horlova told Mediazona.

Later, Zuev’s daughter managed to establish correspondence with her father through the Zonatelecom service while he was in detention.