“There were supposed to be ten of you, but one is already a corpse”. How the FSB is catching “Ukrainian terrorists”—story of the “Kherson Nine”

Tall and drawn, former AFU soldier Denys Lialka speaks quickly and indistinctly in court. His lawyer asks him to slow down.

“Did you know Vasyl Stetsenko?” she asks again.

“I found out about Stetsenko in the basement—it was a corpse,” the defendant replies after a short pause, still speaking very quickly. “When they brought me there, a corpse in a bag was lying in front of the basement and the torture chamber. Later, they told me that it was this very Vasyl, but I didn’t know him. And the officers who were taking me out were also talking about some Vasyl. Like, ‘There were supposed to be ten of you, but one is already a corpse, this Vasya here. We don’t know what to do with him.’”

Vasyl Stetsenko, 39, had worked as the chief specialist at the Kherson State Environmental Inspection prior to the full-scale invasion. He was abducted by FSB agents after refusing to cooperate with the Russian occupying authorities, as his acquaintance—and fellow inmate—Serhiy Heidt would later testify in court. According to Heidt, Stetsenko died in his arms in the basement of the former National Police headquarters in Kherson, where Russian security forces tortured him and other detained Kherson residents for two months. 

The FSB abducted him in July 2022; the man was tortured with electric shocks and beaten for several days. From the pain and thirst, Stetsenko “lost all sense of reality,” drank his own urine, and “was already soiling himself and couldn’t stand up,” his cellmates testified in court. There were three other men with him in the cell where he was thrown after being tortured. On August 3, 2022, Stetsenko died. Security forces stuffed him into a black bag, carried him out of the basement, and took him away to an unknown location. 

Most likely, Vasyl Stetsenko was to become the tenth defendant in the case of the “Kherson Nine,” which the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don had been hearing for two years. On January 30, 2026, Judge Kirill Krivtsov sentenced nine residents of Kherson to prison terms ranging from 14 to 20 years for “participation in a terrorist organisation” and “attempted international terrorism.” Six of them were also charged with “preparing a terrorist attack.”

The surname Stetsenko appears more than 200 times in the indictment alone—the defense attorneys tried to draw Judge Kirill Krivtsov’s attention to this, asserting their right to ask the defendants questions about the deceased. 

“What happened to the body?” asked one of the defense attorneys, but the judge dismissed her questions about the murdered Kherson resident one after another.

“Stetsenko’s fate has not been described by the preliminary investigation authorities!” Krivtsov snapped. “Stetsenko has no connection to the charges brought!”

“They’ve captured a child! This is so fucked up.” Torture in the basement

For eight months, starting on March 3, 2022, the Kherson region was under occupation by Russian forces. Ukraine liberated the part of the region along the right bank of the Dnieper River, including its capital, during an offensive in November 2022. As with other Ukrainian territories, several torture chambers were discovered in Kherson and the region following the de-occupation. One of them was the basement of the former National Police headquarters in Kherson at 4 Liuteranska Street, where not only the Kherson “Nine” but also other prisoners were tortured.

37-year-old Denys Lialka, 44-year-old Serhiy Heidt, and seven other Kherson residents—35-year-old Serhiy Kovalsky, 61-year-old Kostiantyn Reznik, 52-year-old Serhiy Kabakov, 42-year-old Yuri Kayov, 46-year-old Yuriy Tavozhniansky, 53-year-old Oleh Bohdanov, and 49-year-old Serhiy Ofitserov—have been deprived of their freedom since the summer of 2022. In July and August, Russian security forces abducted them one by one in occupied Kherson.

Some, like former customs officer Yuriy Tavozhniansky, stepped out of their apartment in their pajamas for just a couple of minutes—and vanished. Driver Oleh Bohdanov was playing with his four-year-old son when masked men suddenly burst into the courtyard of their home and knocked the man to the ground. “The child didn’t speak for six months after that,” Bohdanov said in court. Serhiy Kovalsky’s daughter, one and a half years old, also saw strangers taking her father, his common-law wife Oleksandra told Mediazona. She says that the child, now five, “is still afraid of men” and still remembers that day.

They were all abducted following the same pattern: bag over the head—and to the basement of the former National Police headquarters. There, the men were beaten and tortured with electric shocks, and then locked in a cell.

“They took me out of the car and led me to the basement. Right at the entrance on the left was an open door. They led me into a small room about two by four meters in size,” recalled Yuri Kayov, a businessman and Red Cross volunteer, describing the day of his abduction in court. “Wooden pallets were laid out along the entire perimeter of the floor. There was a chair in the centre, a desk on the left, and several chairs in the passageway on the right. They sat me down in the centre. My hands were tied behind my back and further secured to the chair with something. They put a metal clamp on my finger. Four or five people entered the room and began interrogating me: shouting, sometimes one at a time, sometimes all together, touching my head with a metal object and applying an electric shock.”

Commodity expert Serhiy Ofitserov testified in court that after the electric shocks he “was drenched in sweat.”

For Denys Lialka, a former serviceman, the torture caused some of his teeth to crumble and fall out. “When they apply the current through your head, you can’t breathe at all: it feels like your lungs aren’t working, your muscles cramp up, and your jaws clench so hard that your teeth crumble,” he recalled during one of the subsequent interrogations.

According to the prosecution, in the spring and summer of 2022, nine Ukrainians, acting on orders from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), formed a “terrorist group” and planned a series of attacks on collaborationist officials in the occupied part of the Kherson region, including the murders of Kirill Stremousov, deputy head of the pro-Russian administration; Vitaly Bulyuk, former head of the Kherson customs office; and Alexei Kovalev, a former member of the Verkhovna Rada. 

But back then, in the summer of 2022, none of the detained men knew exactly what they were being accused of. During the beatings, the FSB agents asked chaotic questions; they were interested in everything: where the caches of weapons and explosives were, where the SBU officers, territorial defense personnel, veterans of the Donbas war, and hunters were; which residents of Kherson do not support Russia’s “special military operation,” who attends Ukrainian rallies, and so on. 

“They shouted at me: ‘Are you a soldier or a Bandera supporter?’” Ofitserov recalled.

Serhiy Heidt, the director of a fishing enterprise, was also tortured with electric shocks at first. Then the interrogators “moved on to more ‘gentle’ methods,” as he tried to joke in court—they pinned his arms in the doorway and began slamming the door against them. After that, he was locked in one of the cells, two by five meters, with no windows and almost no lighting.

“And that was it—the torture went on for a month and a half,” Heidt recounted. “And the torture was so bad that… I hung from the bars for 10 days. Just a grate, a can of paint—and there you are, hanging for 10 days without water or food. They come once every three days, give you water to drink, and that’s it.”

Security forces broke Denys Lialka’s ribs. He said that he “lay on the floor for a month and a half and didn’t sleep a wink from the very first day”—there were no beds in the basement cell: “There was one plank that could fit a maximum of three people. Because of the severe pain in my body, I couldn’t lie on the same plank with anyone else.”

The people who tortured them were in civilian clothes, Heidt continues. He recalls how businessman Kostiantyn Reznik, the eldest one in the group, suffered a heart attack after yet another beating, but the security forces did not call an ambulance. The prisoners had no contact with their relatives—their phones, money, and personal belongings were confiscated upon their arrest. 

A young man who went by the call sign “Orel” (“Eagle”) was in charge of the prisoners’ infrequent meals—he was also one of those who tortured them. According to Yuriy Kayov, Orel “was particularly cruel” and fed them sparingly once every two or three days: if they were lucky, with pasta and stew, but mostly with crackers and hardtack. Kayov lost 25 kilos during his two months in the basement. 

“27–30 years old, short, thin, with a dark beard and brown eyes,” Kayov said of Orel. “He was unable to roll his ‘R’s and never hid his face. He regularly came in to show us some propaganda.” 

Orel liked to record interrogations on his phone, and he also forced the Ukrainian prisoners to learn the Russian national anthem. “When he came down to our basement, he would play a low-quality recording on his phone, a musical piece titled ‘Fuck the Nazis,’ glorifying the exploits of the Wagner PMC and calling for enlistment in their ranks.” 

On days when there were no beatings, other torture methods were employed. For example, a simulation of a firing squad: the guards would take captives out of the cell one by one, saying they are going to be killed, lead them into the torture chamber, and shoot at the ceiling. And then repeat the procedure with the next person. At night, young soldiers aged 19–20 were on duty in the basement; one of them had the call sign “Sever” (“North”), recalled Yuri Kayov.

“Very drunk, they ran along the corridor, waking us up, shouting through the doors: ‘Glory to Ukraine…’ And we were supposed to answer: ‘...as part of the Russian Federation!’” Kayov testified. “They beat those hanging on the metal grille, randomly took people out of cells, beat them, mocked them, and asked historical questions mostly concerning the Second World War and our patriotic feelings for ‘the state that doesn’t exist’—that’s what they called Ukraine. Our knowledge of history differed from theirs, and this could not help but upset them. They did all this to the tune of the Soviet WWII anthem ‘The Sacred War’.”

The water rations were one liter per cell a day. Sometimes, the men had to stretch this amount for several days. They couldn’t wash themselves, guards didn’t take them to the toilet—so they had to use a 5-liter bottle right in the cell.

“Every morning a soldier with the call sign ‘Voron’ [‘Raven’] came,” Kayov continued. “At our request, he allowed us to fill bottles, empty out urine, and go to the toilet to defecate. Voron really loved rock music, played it constantly, and always wore a balaclava.”

Kayov said that during the two months he spent in the basement he saw all kinds of people: “Journalists, priests, the head of the [Ukrainian nationalist organisation] Right Sector in Kherson, a history professor, activists, bloggers, the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations for the city of Oleshky, a prosecutor, and the former head of the Gornostayevka administration, Oleg Ipatov—he spent three days with us in the cell around mid-September.”

Everyone, without exception, was tortured, including women of various ages. Among the captives was even an 11-year-old boy, Kayov said.

“For the last two weeks—at the beginning of October 2022—they held an 11-year-old boy in the basement with us in cell No. 7 for allegedly sending target coordinates to the SBU. He cried constantly at night and begged for his mother. Unlike us, he spoke Ukrainian, from which we concluded he was from somewhere in the countryside. I don’t know his fate; he was taken away about a day before our departure to Simferopol.”

At the same time, a 14-year-old boy had also been held in another basement cell for about two weeks, Denys Lialka testified.

“They forced him to kick his friend in the head,” Lialka recalled. “He was crying hard and hitting him. After two weeks, they took him away somewhere.”

Another captive who was held in the basement managed to keep a diary throughout his time there—and he was able to pass on several pages of it to his relatives. In one of the diary entries, he also mentions the boy.

“Yesterday, I noticed a voice coming from one of the cells. I thought I was imagining things. But they’ve captured a child!.. This is so fucked up! A guard took him out, said they’d talk and he’d drive the boy home today. But after talking, they brought him back to the cell. The kid’s voice was trembling.”

The author of the diary assumes that the boy was “taken” because he took photographs of Russian military equipment.

“That’s so untypical for a young boy, isn’t it? Even if they did find photos on him. Just take his phone, give him a good scolding, and let him go. It breaks my heart to think that he’s in such conditions, seeing all this, being treated this way, and still not released.”

In mid-September 2022, an elderly man, “who appeared to be between 82 and 92 years old,” was brought to the basement, Denys Lialka stated in his testimony. 

“He was a neighborhood committee head in some residential area of Kherson. They asked him where SBU officers, military personnel, and those opposed to Russia lived. The man explained that he didn’t know, since everyone had left. He was kept chained to the grille for about two weeks. He was taken to the toilet once every two days; otherwise, a bottle was placed next to him. Officers passing by beat him.”

“Violation of the peaceful coexistence of states and peoples.” The prosecution’s version

For readability and to save space, in this chapter, we sometimes omitted introductory phrases such as "according to the FSB," "as claimed by security officials," "according to the indictment," etc. This does not mean that Mediazona considers the following allegations of the investigation to be proven.

In the spring of 2022, several SBU officers created a “terrorist group” in occupied Kherson. Samir Shukyurov was involved in recruiting residents of the occupied region. Investigators believe he was assisted by four other security officers: Viktor Khomyak, Dmytro Sidey, as well as officers Demyanov and “Marcus,” plus “other unidentified individuals.”

“No later than May 2022,” Shukyurov recruited businessman Kostiantyn Reznik and his manager Serhiy Kabakov, investigation claims. Reznik’s company was engaged in construction work on the Dnieper River: finishing, installation, and repair of piers. According to the SBU’s plan, the colleagues were to prepare an assassination attempt on a member of the military-civilian administration—former Verkhovna Rada deputy Alexei Kovalev. According to the plan, the explosive device was to be attached to the pier on Korabel, an island district of Kherson, from where the official often traveled to work by jet ski.

Then, “no later than July 10, 2022,” Shukyurov handed over to Reznik and Kabakov the components for assembling a homemade explosive device. They “recruited” two more Kherson residents—44-year-old head of fisheries production Serhiy Heidt and his acquaintance, 39-year-old employee of the Kherson Environmental Inspection, Vasyl Stetsenko. According to the investigation, Heidt and Stetsenko “had the knowledge necessary to manufacture an IED” and were also supposed to attach the explosive device to the pier used by Kovalev using a magnet.

“On July 11, around 7 a.m. <...> Stetsenko swam out and attached the IED under the pier,” Heidt’s confession states. “I was in the reeds, and Stetsenko was on the shore. Kovalev arrived; Stetsenko pressed the button several times, but for some reason it didn’t work.”

Shukyurov also contacted Ukrainian Armed Forces serviceman Serhiy Kovalsky “no later than July 1, 2022”—“for purposes directed against the interests of the Russian Federation.” The 35-year-old Kovalsky was supposed to remotely detonate a Chevrolet Lacetti parked at the intersection of Perekopska and Subbota Streets—at the moment when Vitaly Bulyuk, another employee of the Kherson occupational administration, would be driving past in his Toyota Highlander.

Kovalsky then asked his cousin once removed—49-year-old merchandiser Serhiy Ofitserov—for help. Ofitserov tracked Bulyuk’s car movements around the city and reported the routes to his nephew. 

At the same time, the SBU recruited two more residents of Kherson: 54-year-old Oleh Bohdanov and 46-year-old Yuriy Tavozhniansky. On July 1, 2022, on the orders of his “handlers” Vyktor Khomyak and Dmytro Sidey, Bohdanov transported “plastic blasting explosives” and detonators from Mykolaiv to Kherson, hiding them in a cache in the courtyard of his home at 38 Dekabristov Street. Later, an “unidentified person” moved the IED components to another hiding place, from which Reznik and Kabakov retrieved them. They were supposed to hide the explosives in a bottle from “Agusha” baby formula and then throw it into the gas tank of collaborator Alexei Kovalev’s jet ski.

Tavozhniansky, the former deputy head of the Kherson Port customs office, transferred a total of 15,000 hryvnias (around $400 at the time) to Reznik from SBU officer Shukyurov to organize the assassination attempts. It is alleged that his duties also included surveilling employees of the Kherson occupational administration.

The last two individuals implicated in the case are 42-year-old entrepreneur and Red Cross volunteer Yuriy Kayov and his acquaintance, 37-year-old former AFU serviceman Denys Lialka. Another “member of the terrorist cell” mentioned by the prosecution is the owner of the “Sale e Pepe” pizzeria, Serhiy Zelinsky, who had known both men for a long time, but has left Kherson.

The investigation claims that SBU officer Shukyurov entered into a “criminal conspiracy” with Zelinsky, who handed over the IED components to Kayov and Lyalka. They assembled the explosives and put them in a hiding place set up in Kayov’s grocery warehouse. According to the indictment, on August 4, Kovalsky retrieved the IED—he was supposed to blow up the car of Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Kherson Regional State Administration, but the FSB thwarted the attempt.

The prosecution claims that members of the “terrorist group” communicated with each other in a WhatsApp group called “Groceries,” where they used “various words to obscure the meaning of their messages,” and the messages in the group were set to self-delete.

Monotonously repeating the goals and objectives of the “special military operation” in the indictment, investigators mention, among other things, “protecting the population of Ukraine from abuse and genocide by the current leadership of Ukraine,” as well as “the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine.” The document states that the defendants decided to carry out an act of international terrorism to disrupt the “peaceful coexistence of states and peoples” and weaken the “trust and support of the residents of the Kherson region” for Russia. 

“Excuse me, what ‘peaceful coexistence’ are we talking about? Before or after February 24, 2022? It was the Russian Federation, I remind you, that at 4 a.m., without a declaration of war, began bombing Ukrainian citizens,” said Serhiy Ofitserov in court. “In the morning, I woke up to the sounds of explosions! It was the Russian Federation that destroyed my peaceful existence, and now it accuses me of what it did itself!”.

“They showed armed men standing with my wife and daughter.” Confessions as the basis of the case

The case of the Kherson Nine is entirely based on the confessions of all the defendants. In court and sometimes even at the preliminary investigation stage, the men recanted their earlier statements, claiming they had been forced to incriminate themselves due to abuse by security forces. 

FSB agents handed them the interrogation transcripts to sign in late September 2022, still in the basement, after two months of torture. The prisoners did not see exactly what they were signing—the operatives covered the text of the document with another sheet of paper.

However, physical torture wasn’t the only way the men were forced to sign the confessions: security forces threatened that, if they refused, the relatives of the “nine” would also end up in the basement. 

According to 44-year-old Serhiy Heidt, during the interrogation, operatives called someone via video link. “They showed me two armed men standing next to my wife and daughter,” he recalled.

61-year-old Kostiantyn Reznik recounted in court how he was once taken to his daughter’s house—she was pregnant with his granddaughter in the summer of 2022—and saw the young woman standing in the yard. “The FSB agents told me, ‘You have a choice,’” Reznik recalled. “Well, I made a choice and signed everything.”

The Kherson residents also had to participate in “operational and investigative activities,” which they describe as staged. The FSB agents told the men where to stand and what to do—then took photos and videos. Often, they had to do several takes: if the operatives didn’t like how the men were acting, they threatened them with electric shock torture.

“Stand here, point your finger this way,” Serhiy Kabakov recalled in court, describing what the security forces told him during such outings.

According to Serhiy Kovalsky, during one such “activity” he saw his phone for the first time since his abduction—the operatives put the device in his pocket, and when they finished filming the video, they took it back. 

“They started taking us one by one to a room on the second floor of the administration building where there were various weapons—they forced us to hold them to leave fingerprints,” Yuri Kayov stated in his testimony. “They gave me a grey substance that looked like plasticine.”

All procedural documents from the initiation of the criminal case are dated October 6, 2022—the day of the official detention of all members of the “Kherson Nine.” According to these documents, it was then that the FSB detained them all in Simferopol, not abducted several months prior in Kherson. And charges were brought against the men all at once and at that time. Meanwhile, the investigators casually mentioned that all the individuals involved had been “identified” much earlier—as far back as August 2022—yet for some reason, they were not designated as suspects or defendants until October. They were not even subject to any pretrial measures, nor were they required to sign a pledge to appear in court.

The FSB also did not specify in its documents exactly how the accused ended up in Simferopol on October 6, given that operational search activities involving them had taken place in Kherson, months earlier. The captives themselves revealed the mystery of their enigmatic movement: on October 5, they were all taken out of the basement, forced to sign some papers again, and then transported in two minibuses from Kherson to Simferopol—where the FSB headquarters for occupied Crimea is located. Reznik, Kabakov, and Lialka were transported in the trunk—and there were no checks along the way.

“There is a specific procedure for presenting documents to cross the state border, filling out immigration cards, and so on,” said one of the lawyers, drawing the court’s attention to the fact that the Ukrainian citizens were first held in a basement for two months and then illegally transported across the border. “But when people cross the border in the trunk like cargo, then, of course, no documents are provided!”

The lawyers asked the court to send a request to the FSB Border Guard Service for Crimea to clarify the details of their clients’ border crossing, but Judge Kirill Krivtsov denied the motion.

On October 6, 2022, officers of the FSB Directorate for Crimea and Sevastopol opened a criminal case against the nine men from Kherson; according to the documents, a day later, on October 7,  the case was transferred to the Investigative Directorate of the FSB of Russia. FSB Captain Anton Grishchenko drafted a report on the discovery of signs of a crime on the same day, October 6, 2022.

FSB investigators interrogated the Kherson residents on multiple occasions: on October 6, 2022, in Simferopol, as well as several times between January and October 2023 in Moscow. The men did not recant their initial statements until court-appointed attorneys joined the case and the trial began. Both the defendants and their lawyers explain this simply: they feared for themselves and their loved ones.

“They sent us to the headquarters of the agency, which kept us in a basement for two months,” Serhiy Ofitserov said, when the judge asked him why he didn’t revoke his confession sooner. “And if you think that at that moment I felt safe and wanted to talk to the investigator—no!”

“Isolation at a facility meeting security requirements.” FSB witness in court

During questioning in court, all the defendants gave the same code names of the security officers who had tormented them: the leader was Khmury (“Gloomy”), and under him were Shstil (“Calm”), Batya (“Pops”), Greek, Yakut, Koshchei (after Russian folk antagonist Koshchei the Deathless), Bury (“Maroon”), Muzykant (“Musician”), Don, Lis (“Fox”), and others. The defendants’ lawyers sought to initiate a criminal case for the use of torture by “unidentified FSB officers.” However, the Russian Investigative Committee refused to open such a case several times.

The latest refusal was issued back in March 2025, but the court did not notify the defense of this until January 15, 2026, two weeks before the verdict was handed down.

The response received by the court stated that “as part of the investigation,” 11 employees of the FSB Directorate headed by A.A. Ivanov, Senior Investigator for Major Crimes of the Counterintelligence Operations Department of the 1st Service of the FSB, were interviewed. Among them were: S.A. Bushuev, G.A. Gabedaui, D.S. Gramashov, A.V. Kupetskov, O.V. Kutsyi, K.Y. Mitrofanov, I.A. Romanets, A.B. Plugin, A.N. Ulanov, N.A. Kholodenko, and A.E. Chumakin. It’s not clear, though, whether “Ivanov” is the real name of the FSB senior investigator.

Security officials confirmed that the suspects in the “Kherson Nine” case were indeed detained back in July–August, not in October 2022. “Between July and August 2022, under [A.A. Ivanov’s] leadership, officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) detained these citizens in the Kherson region, after which they were placed in isolation at a facility meeting security requirements,” the response states.

Both Ivanov and his 11 colleagues assured investigators that “during their detention in isolation, no physical or psychological violence was used against the aforementioned individuals.” At the same time, none of the victims were even questioned.

Judge Krivtsov denied the defence’s request for the investigation materials.

“It is gratifying to acknowledge that, with regard to certain citizens of the Russian Federation, the principle of the presumption of innocence and the admissibility of evidence in favor of potential suspects is fully in effect,” one of the defence attorneys commented ironically on the judge’s decision.

Moreover, in August 2024, the confidential witness “Ivanov” testified in court on behalf of the prosecution. The defendants recognised his voice as that of the security officer who had tortured them, known by the call sign “Khmury.” According to them, he not only oversaw the beatings in Kherson but also met with the defendants in Simferopol and at Moscow’s Lefortovo Pretrial Detention Center No. 2. Some of the defendants claimed the real last name of “Khmury” is Silin—but Mediazona was not able to confirm this.

“Ivanov” stated that “within the framework of the law on the FSB,” he had overseen the detention of the defendants in the summer of 2022. He emphasised that he “acted under the conditions of a ‘special military operation.’” This was his response to the lawyers’ question about which specific Russian law allowed the FSB to abduct Ukrainian citizens and conduct “operational and investigative activities” against them on the territory of another state without granting them procedural status, without charging them, and without allowing lawyers to represent them.

“Were there any permits from the Ukrainian authorities to conduct these operational and investigative activities?” one of the defence attorneys asked him.

“How do you imagine that?” “Ivanov” smirked and added that “relations with Ukraine aren’t very good right now.”

When asked by the lawyers how and when the defendants were transported to Simferopol, “Ivanov” did not answer, saying that he was not present during their transport.

“Why were they then taken to Moscow?”

“Because conducting an investigation under ‘special military operations’ conditions is unsafe. At that time, investigative authorities were not permitted to leave the territory of their garrison. It’s a matter of personnel safety,” the witness said.

“Ivanov” described the basement of the former National Police headquarters, where the suspects were tortured, as “a place inaccessible to outsiders,” without specifying the address. He denies falsifying the initial testimony, dates of detention, and evidence—as well as beatings and torture, for that matter.

“No. Of course not,” he replied to the lawyer’s question about whether he or his staff had participated in the beatings. At that moment, the defendants’ laughter and applause rang out from the glass-walled cage they spent the trial in.

At Rostov Pretrial Detention Center No. 1, where the Kherson residents were transferred at the start of the trial, the guards were also violent toward them: during morning inspections, they were forced to bend over and sing the Russian national anthem, beaten with sticks on the back, and threatened with “fucking them in the ass” with a rubber police baton if they complained to their lawyers.

The defendants first spoke about the beatings at a hearing of the Southern District Military Court on January 30, 2025. On May 15, Yuri Kayov was brought into the courtroom with traces of blood on his face, which his lawyer pointed out to the judge. Kayov himself said that all the defendants were led into court bent over—he tripped and cut his face. 

After that, 11 lawyers signed an appeal to the court asking for security guarantees for their defendants. The court passed the defence’s petition about “systematic violence” of the guards to the Prosecutor’s Office and the Investigative Committee.

Who is who in the “Kherson Nine” case and how they are connected

Serhiy Kovalsky

According to investigators, in the summer of 2022, AFU soldier Serhiy Kovalsky was supposed to blow up two officials of the Kherson occupational administration—Vitaly Bulyuk and Kirill Stremousov—at the same time. However, the attempt on Bulyuk’s life failed because “the explosion did not occur due to a technical malfunction,” and killing Stremousov “proved impossible due to circumstances beyond the participants’ control following the discovery and seizure of the means and tools used to commit the crime on August 4 and 5, 2022.” 

In fact, Kovalsky was detained as early as August 3, 2022, after which he was tortured for two months in the basement of the former National Police building. 

In court, Kovalsky recounted that the security forces immediately took his phone. At first, he refused to give the password: “I gave them the password after they tortured me: first with electric shocks, then they drowned me, I lost consciousness…” 

He was held in solitary confinement for several weeks. Other defendants in the “Kherson Nine” case testified in court that the soldier was tortured more than the other detainees.

“When they brought him to our home to take another phone, they had taken the handcuffs off him; and I saw there were cuts on his hands,” Kovalsky’s partner, Oleksandra, recalls. “They told me: ‘Don’t cry, why are you crying? We’ll bring him back soon; we just need to interrogate him.’ And that was it. Of course, no one ever brought him back.”

At the time of his abduction in August 2022, Serhiy Kovalsky was an active-duty soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He had participated in the war in Donbas that started in 2014, suffered three concussions, injured his spine, and had been in reserve since 2016. In the spring of 2022, after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he was mobilised again. 

“His brigade, which was on the left bank [of the Dnieper], was defeated. The order was to stay on the right bank,” Oleksandra says. “He told me, ‘Take the kids and leave.’ I said that we would either leave together or I would stay here. And we were together until the very end.”

At the very beginning of the trial at the Southern District Military Court, Serhiy Kovalsky asked to be recognised as a prisoner of war, but Judge Kirill Krivtsov replied that such a status is not provided for in the Russian Code of Criminal Procedure. In a separate proceeding on the matter, the court also denied Kovalsky’s request. 

At one of the first hearings in the “Kherson Nine” case, even before the defendants were questioned, Krivtsov unexpectedly began asking Kovalsky questions about texts on his phone. According to the prosecution, the Ukrainian soldier exchanged messages on Threema with a user named Hallo. Investigators believe this is Samir Shukyurov, one of the leaders of the “terrorist group.”

Responding to the judge’s questions, Kovalsky then admitted that in the summer of 2022, on orders from army command, he “resisted enemy troops” and did indeed correspond with an SBU officer using the pseudonym Hallo, but he does not know if it was Shukyurov. 

Kovalsky clarified that he did not view Hallo as a “superior”: SBU officers cannot issue orders to the military, but are “obligated to assist the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence” under martial law and share intelligence—which is why they communicated. 

“I received an order [from the Armed Forces of Ukraine command] to remain in Kherson and operate deep in the rear,” Kovalsky told the judge. He said his task was to monitor the movement of Russian military equipment entering the city via the Antonovsky Bridge and to conduct “operational surveillance” of Vitaly Bulyuk, an employee of the Kherson occupational administration.

“Bulyuk had ties to the officer corps of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation—which is why his movements were of interest to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence,” Kovalsky explained, emphasizing that he had not received an order to carry out an assassination. 

In May 2022, Kovalsky told the judge, he learned from his superiors about a booby-trapped Chevrolet Lacetti intended to blow up Russian military equipment, and in early July he received an order to park this car on Perekopska Street in Kherson.

Later, when an attorney retained by Kovalsky later joined the proceedings instead of a court-appointed lawyer, he recanted these statements, insisting that he “did not consider this to be testimony,” and that Judge Krivtsov had violated the rules of the court proceeding by asking questions about correspondence before the defendant had been questioned by the prosecution and the defence.

During his arrest, Kovalsky’s military uniform was confiscated, and later, a hidden batch of weapons was seized. According to investigators, another member of the “terrorist group,” Shadevsky, who evaded arrest, provided him with the “tools and means to commit the crime.” Kovalsky insisted in court that security forces confiscated his service weapons and those of two other Ukrainian soldiers: two Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunition and clips, and several hand grenades.

After the abduction, FSB officers first brought Serhiy to the house where his partner’s mother lives, and from there to their shared apartment. In the apartment, Kovalsky asked Oleksandra to give him her phone.

“He took off his shirt—and his entire body was blue,” she says. “He managed to say the word ‘current,’ and I understood everything.”

Kovalsky was brought home several more times, and then the agents began visiting her, Oleksandra says. “They would have these excuses like returning a laptop or bringing some documents,” she recalls. “They came to see me two or three times a week, asking questions about other people, thinking I knew where to look, telling me how terrible my husband was. They gave me phone numbers and told me to get in touch with these people. They kept saying that if I helped them find someone, they would return Serhiy to me. But, of course, I knew they were lying. I’d say, ‘Yes, I’ll call,’ and then explain that I couldn’t get through—there was no service, or no answer. In reality, I didn’t even call.”

According to Oleksandra, during the nine months of the Russian occupation of Kherson, she learned to unmistakably recognise Russian security forces on the streets. “They were big, muscular—and they all carried weapons in shoulder bags or under their T-shirts, you could always tell,” the Ukrainian woman says. “Oh, and they all wore caps. And there were always at least two or three of them, never alone. All with a Moscow accent.”

During one of the searches, the family car, a blue Honda Civic, was confiscated from her and Serhiy’s home. Oleksandra had seen it near the former National Police headquarters while walking in a nearby park with her children. “I looked, and there it was. Our car. That’s how I realised the boys were being held downstairs in that building,” she recalls.

After the dam collapsed at the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station in June 2023, Oleksandra and her two daughters fled Ukraine. For over two years, they have been living in Switzerland as refugees.

“The only thing that saves us is that the children are safe and not under the rubble,” Oleksandra says, adding that she suffers from insomnia and “nervous conditions” after her partner’s arrest, but is working with a psychologist.

During the two years of the trial Serhiy Kovalsky, whenever he could, sent Oleksandra his poems and drawings through his lawyer.

“Just like that, to transform from a prisoner of war into an international terrorist, it only took two things: a blank sheet of paper and a gun to my temple,” Serhiy Kovalsky said in his closing statement in court.

Serhiy Ofitserov

Russian security forces abducted merchandiser Serhiy Ofitserov on August 3, 2022, on the same day as Kovalsky. Ofitsterov was taken from his father’s home. 

“That day three people in plain clothes without balaclavas forced their way into my apartment. One of them was brandishing a piston, while the other two were unarmed,” Gennady Ofitserov told the Media Initiative for Human Rights. “They immediately rushed to my son, put him face down on the table, and forced him to unlock his phone. Then they handcuffed him and walked him downstairs to a black-and-white Renault. Federal Security Service operatives would often drive around the occupied city in cars like that. I saw this car later. I rushed to it, but in vain. It didn’t stop. There was another car parked downstairs from which the Russians were conducting surveillance, as well as a minivan with Russian soldiers.”

According to Gennady Ofitserov, the security forces did not conduct a search at his home, but later came to his son’s apartment, where they seized all the computer equipment.

Serhiy Ofitserov has a Russian passport. He was born in Kherson, but his parents later moved to Kamchatka for work, where they lived for 15 years before returning to Ukraine. In 2008, Ofitserov received a residence permit in Ukraine, and in February–March 2022, he was supposed to receive Ukrainian citizenship—this did not happen due to the Russian invasion.

According to Ofitserov’s father, Serhiy has always been a patriot of Ukraine. In an interview with the Ukrainian publication Fakty, Gennady Ofitserov did not rule out the possibility that his son might have been helping the Ukrainian military—which could have drawn the attention of Russian security forces.

“He listened to [Ukrainian] music and switched to Ukrainian-language content online. A patriot of Ukraine, but with a Russian passport,” he said.

Of the entire “nine,” Ofitserov only knew Kovalsky personally—they are related. He does not deny that, together with Kovalsky, he monitored the movements of Russian military equipment. According to Ofitserov, in the summer of 2022, Russian military and security forces moved through the occupied city in unmarked vehicles and looked like “some kind of gang.”

“Their cars had imperial, Soviet, and Russian flags,” Ofitserov said in court. “Kovalsky stayed in the car at the beginning of Perekopskaya Street, while I walked about a kilometer, probably toward the Antonovsky Bridge. We stayed in touch by phone. There was also a reconnaissance mission near the ‘White House’—to see what cars were there.”

According to Ofitserov, after being abducted by the FSB, he hung on a grille in the basement of the former National Police headquarters for at least six days without sleep, food, or water. Prior to that, during interrogation, they broke his ribs.

“Every time I asked what they wanted me to say, I received an electric shock,” he recalled.

Over time, while hanging on the bars, he began to experience auditory hallucinations, Ofitserov said. He agreed to sign a confession only after the security forces threatened to rape him with a baton.

Kostiantyn Reznik and Serghiy Kabakov

“I was given the nickname ‘Coach.’ At first, my handler was someone named ‘Markus,’ and I only communicated with him by phone. Then, my handler was ‘Shcheben’ (‘Gravel’). That’s basically it. They gave me assignments,” said an exhausted man in a light shirt in a video published on August 21, 2022, on the pro-Russian Telegram channel “Khersonshchyna News.” Later that day, the clip was shown in a report on the “Vesti Nedeli,” a weekly program on the state Russia-1 TV channel, about the “saboteurs” detained in Kherson.

The man in the video was 61-year-old businessman Kostiantyn Reznik. Russian security forces kidnapped him on July 21, 2022, a month before the report was published. However, the “Kherson Nine” case states that Reznik and his manager Serhiy Kabakov were “located” in the island Korabel district on August 2, where, according to investigators, they planned to plant explosives on collaborator Kovalev’s jet ski.

In the “report on the inspection of premises, structures, and terrain” dated August 2, 2022, FSB detective Major Vadim Muravyov reports that at 8:20 a.m., security forces spotted Kabakov on Korabel. A detonator and an “Agusha” bottle with a “gray plastic explosive” and a yellow wire were found in his bag.

Kabakov then “explained” that he was on the island “on instructions from the SBU to plant a discovered IED with the purpose of carrying out an explosion directed against the interests of the Russian Federation, the victims of which were intended to be employees of the Kherson region military-civil administration and Ukrainian and Russian civilians present at the pier,” the document states. Investigators claim that Kabakov also told the operative about Kostiantyn Reznik, “who was situated near this location,” and described him.

That same morning, at 8:45 a.m., another FSB operative, Denis Borisov, discovered Reznik on the island. “During the observation, the said man did not perform any actions, but looked around,” he wrote in his report. Despite this, 10 minutes later, Borisov was already inspecting his belongings: he found a remote control and a Xiaomi Redmi 4A phone in Reznik’s pockets, which he confiscated. Later, investigators would be confused in the case file about whose phone it was: in some volumes, the device is described as Reznik’s smartphone, in others, as Kabakov’s.

“Reznik explained that this remote control was intended to detonate an IED, which Kabakov was to plant,” the report states. Also attached to the case file were two “voluntary consents” to search their homes, handwritten by Reznik and Kabakov.

The defendants would later testify in court that they wrote these “consent” forms under threat on October 5, the day before their transfer to Simferopol.

Despite the fact that Reznik and Kabakov lived in separate houses, investigators took both to the same address: Stroiteley street, 3, apartment 17. According to the search report, components of an IED, microchips, and a box containing electric detonators were found there. On a Xiaomi Redmi 4A phone, security officials discovered messages with a user named “Sergey Gravel Auto”—Kabakov and Reznik claimed he was an SBU officer who was giving them instructions. A photo in the case file shows both men standing on a carpet in the middle of a sparsely furnished room, looking confused.

When security officials brought Kostiantyn Reznik to the apartment where he actually lived on July 21, his wife, Tetiana, was home. “They brought him in a black Hyundai van,” she recalls. “Two people came in and asked for phones.”

During the search of the house, Reznik wasn’t feeling well: he asked the people accompanying him if he could sit on a chair, and his wife brought him some water. “As we later understood, they had beaten him before,” says Tetiana.

She says the operatives conducted a “minor search” of their apartment that day: the security forces were interested in their phones, their child’s laptop, and the contents of the garage. After confiscating the equipment, they left.

“They took Kostya—and we never saw him again,” says Reznik’s wife. From that day on, she began searching for Kostiantyn on her own, going to buildings where Russian troops were stationed every day.

“I walked all over the city, through all the basements of Kherson. The buildings where the police were stationed, the SBU... well, all of those. We filed complaints with the police, the military administration. I also went and asked around all the buildings where our Kherson people were being held. Some of them were coming out, and word was slowly spreading. I’d come up to them and say, ‘Excuse me, I’m looking for my husband, can I ask if he’s here?’—’There's no one here, they're not holding people here,’ and that was it.”

A month after her husband’s disappearance, Tetiana saw the “Vesti Nedeli” report: Kostiantyn had lost a lot of weight and was missing some of his front teeth.

“We went to nearby parks, across from the administration building, to cafes, and watched what time cars arrived and what time they left,” Serhiy Kabakov recounts his surveillance methods in the same ‘Vesti Nedeli’ video. “And secondly, we obtained explosives through drop-offs and deliveries in secret locations.”

The investigation alleges that “Sergey Gravel Auto,” with whom Reznik and Kabakov communicated, was Samir Shukyurov, one of the organizers of the “terrorist group.” He was the one who gave the Kherson residents orders to manufacture IEDs and subsequently blow up collaborating officials. Reznik claims he never knew or communicated with Shukyurov and that “Sergey Gravel Auto” was an acquaintance who supplied him with crushed stone.

Reznik doesn’t deny he did have a contact for a secret service official in his phone—SBU officer Demyanov, with whom he had once communicated on business matters.

“There are 50,000 dachas on the [Dnieper] River,” Reznik testified in court. “We service 35,000 dachas.” “An SBU officer or a police officer—I know a lot of people, I have keys to some dachas. But that doesn’t mean I’m a terrorist!”

On February 26, 2022, Reznik called Demyanov: “But that was because looting had begun on the [Dnieper] River!”

All correspondence with “Gravel” was falsified by FSB officers, who confiscated their phones during their arrests on July 21, 2022, according to Reznik and Kabakov. However, the case also mentions a phone call to “Gravel” on August 2, 2022, as part of an “operational experiment.” In it, Reznik and Kabakov speak over speakerphone with “Gravel” about their fear of carrying out his orders and their physical exhaustion: their “legs are like cotton” and they’re already “looking over their shoulders at old ladies.”

“And this... we have this nonsense lying around right now, we need to get rid of it, because we’re genuinely afraid,” Kabakov told “Gravel,” according to the transcript of the call.

At the trial, Reznik and Kabakov testified that FSB officers took them from the basement to the courtyard of the National Police building that day, pulled hats over their faces, called someone, and forced them at gunpoint to recite previously rehearsed lines. The men said the voice of “Gravel,” with whom they were forced to contact that day, was unfamiliar to them.

“Everything was staged, and we were like actors,” Reznik testified in court.

Oleh Bohdanov

In addition to Reznik and Kabakov, the “Vesti Nedeli” report showed the arrest of Oleh Bohdanov, the former head of the Kherson Department of Transport, Road Infrastructure, and Communications. Bohdanov, a sea captain by training, was kidnapped by Russian security forces on July 29, 2022.

According to the indictment, on July 1, 2022, Bohdanov purchased an Infiniti car in Odesa, then traveled to Mykolaiv, where he received components for making explosive devices from SBU officers Khomyak and Sidey. He then delivered them to Kherson, leaving the cargo in a hiding place at 38 Dekabrystiv Street—in the courtyard of his home. That same day, an “unidentified member of the terrorist group” transferred the IED components to a hiding place at 96 Kolodezna Street.

“The criminal case contains no evidence whatsoever that the explosive substance stored at 96 Kolodezna Street had previously been in the possession of my client, transported by him, or had any connection to him: no photos, no correspondence, no video recordings, no witness statements!” Bohdanov’s lawyer said in court.

On July 1, Kherson and Mykolaiv were devided by the front line. Driving from one city to another, with all of the shellings and checkpoints, in a single day—Bohdanov’s attorney called the suggestion that this was possible “an investigator’s fantasy.”

For a long time, Bohdanov’s family didn’t know about his detention because “Oleh simply disappeared,” and his parents are “elderly,” his cousin Roman told Mediazona. According to him, Bohdanov evacuated refugees from the Kherson region after the Russian invasion began.

“We saw each other on holidays; I only spoke with my father’s family out of politeness,” Roman continues. “What Oleh has been doing lately—honestly, I don’t know. I know he used to go on voyages as a sailor, but that was a hundred years ago.”

Bohdanov is twice divorced and has three children.

“Oleh was constantly... how can I put it without sounding offensive? Soft-hearted, very kind by nature—he would put up with these wives, then something else. He was constantly upset, depressed. And when I learned of his arrest, I was shocked,” his cousin says.

Even at the beginning of the trial, Bohdanov complained to the court about his health: he had back and kidney pain. During his two years in pretrial detention, he received no medical treatment—he was even forbidden from receiving medication, he said during the closing arguments. “We are exposed to mortal danger on a daily basis, to this very day,” he said in court.

Denys Lialka

“On February 24, 2022, Denys’s contract ended and he returned home to Tyahynka, in the Kherson region,” the sister of Denys Lialka, Yulia, told the publication Tochka Skhodu. “He had to register for military service and went to Kherson to do so. Everything around him was already burning from Russian bombing, but he somehow made it to the city. However, he was unable to return home—he remained under occupation until August 2022. They were looking for him in Tyahynka because everyone knew that my brother was a soldier. Someone definitely turned him in. Russian soldiers were driving around the village, and a local was in the car, showing them where the Ukrainian soldiers were staying.”

According to Yulia, after completing his military service, her brother wanted to open an agricultural business with the money he earned, but Russian security forces confiscated all his savings.

Lyalka doesn't remember the exact date of his abduction, claiming that his memory has seriously deteriorated after being tortured. “From August 3rd to 5th [2022], between seven and eight in the evening, armed men broke into the apartment,” he testified in court. “They were in military uniforms, special forces officers. And two in civilian clothes. They started shouting, ‘Where are the explosives?’ and ‘Where are the weapons?’ They started beating me, taking phones and money. They simply swept things off the shelf, took all the money, laptop, phones, military uniform, and documents.”

According to Lialka, one of the men who broke into the apartment saw a package of winter socks with the AFU emblem among his things and, grinning, took them for himself.

That evening, several people remained in Lialka’s apartment, while he was taken to a torture chamber in the basement of the former National Police headquarters, where he was beaten and asked “all the same questions.” After a week of torture, Lialka was brought home again. During this time, almost all of his appliances, except for the refrigerator and washing machine, were removed from the apartment, he said.

Of all the detained defendants in the "Kherson Nine" case, Denys Lialka knew only Yuriy Kayov, an entrepreneur and Red Cross volunteer. Kayov supplied food to cafes and restaurants in Kherson. Shortly before the full-scale Russian invasion, the men were introduced by a mutual friend, entrepreneur Serhiy Zelinsky, who owned a pizzeria in town.

Investigators claim that Serhiy Zelinsky “discussed” with Lialka the assassination of two collaborators: Igor Semenchev, Deputy Head of the Kherson Regional State Administration for Fuel and Energy, Industry, and Trade, and retired police general Valery Litvin. “According to Zelinsky’s plan, these individuals were to be shot or their cars were to be blown up along their route,” the state prosecutor quoted the case materials. Lialka and Kayov were also supposed to manufacture and store an IED to blow up Kirill Stremousov’s car, the prosecution claims.

The evidence the investigation has includes telephone conversations between Lialka, Kayov, and Zelinsky (but what they discussed was not established) and Lialka's confession, which he later retracted.

According to the prosecution, as early as March 2022, Lialka, through an acquaintance named Roman, met “a representative of the Ukrainian special services” named Artyom Tsvetkov, who “offered him to carry out subversive activities in the Kherson region” in exchange for a certificate stating that Lialka “was not hiding from military service, but was assisting the Ukrainian special services.”

In April 2022, Lialka sent Tsvetkov a photograph of a Russian military checkpoint on Neftyanykiv Street, and in July, at Tsvetkov’s request, he picked up a package from “a certain Olga,” receiving a reward of 12,000 hryvnia (about $400 at the time), the indictment states.

“Around the end of July 2022, Tsvetkov sent him the phone number of a certain Olga, asking her to pick up a package containing a remote-detonating device in the form of a key fob and two batteries wrapped in white adhesive tape, as well as two phones. He gave the password: ‘I want to buy 1-2 or 3 kilos of cabbage.’ After taking the items, which were in two packages of diapers, he photographed them and sent them to Tsvetkov,” the investigation alleges.

In court, Lialka claimed that the diapers were intended for the elderly and people with limited mobility in Kherson: after the city’s occupation, he volunteered to deliver food and hygiene products to them. Lialka denies all charges of participating in a “criminal organisation” and plotting assassinations.

Yuriy Kayov

When discussing future bombings with businessman Yuriy Kayov, Serhiy Zelinsky referred to the explosive device as a “pie” and its components as “samples,” investigators claim.

The defense objects: the two men did discuss “samples” in correspondence, but they referred to small samples of goods—such as sausage—that Zelinsky’s pizzeria regularly purchased from Kayov.

On the evening of August 5, 2022, the businessman was detained in the village of Skelki, Vasylivka district, Zaporizhzhia region, when he and other Red Cross volunteers stopped for the night. During the first months of the war, Kayov delivered humanitarian aid to people on the occupied territories and evacuated refugees.

Yuriy’s wife told the Azov Region News that in June 2022, Kayov evacuated them and their two children to Zaporizhzhia, while he remained in Kherson. She learned that her husband had been detained by the Russian military from another volunteer. “The head [of the Red Cross] was subsequently released, but Yuriy is now accused of ‘preparing international terrorism’ and attempting to assassinate [Kirill] Stremousov,” the woman said in an interview.

During his abduction, Russian military personnel confiscated Kayov’s phones and items that belonged to the people he had helped evacuate from Kherson. “There was also medical equipment in the car: meant for endoscopic surgery, as far as I know. In my wallet, I had 11,000 hryvnias (just under $300), $200, €3,000, and bank cards. In a red canvas backpack behind the seat, there were 70,000 hryvnias (about $1,200). They seized all of it,” this is Yuriy Kayov’s testimony, which was read out in court on June 19, 2025.

Just like the others, Kayov was brought to the basement on Liuteranska. After being tortured, he told security forces about a weapons cache in the village of Geologiv. According to Kayov, he and other Kherson residents were issued weapons to protect themselves from looters during martial law. Zelinsky gave him four pistols and a clip when he was leaving the city.

“One [operative] asked me why we supported the Ukrainian government so much. I said it was out of patriotic feelings, that I couldn’t have acted otherwise. After these words, the one sitting on the right—his call sign was ‘Tyson’—began punching me in the face and head, shouting that he would teach me to love the motherland.”

In the basement cell, Kayov saw his employee, OIeksandr Kraynik, beaten. He was lying in the corner, unresponsive to his arrival.

“He had been badly beaten, several ribs broken, and a large hematoma covering his chest and abdomen,” Kayov recalled. “He told me he had already been there for several days.”

Kraynik would later serve as a prosecution witness in the case. Like other Kherson residents, he was brought out for “investigative experiments,” and in early October 2022, he was transported to Simferopol, where he signed a witness statement and was then released. According to the investigation, in August 2022, at Yuriy Kayov’s request, Kraynik handed over a package containing an IED hidden in a warehouse to Serhiy Kovalsky. The prosecution claims that Kraynik did not know what was in that package.

According to Kayov, FSB officers themselves set up a hiding place in his warehouse a month after his arrest: “They placed explosives there, and Kraynik showed [the operational search team] where the hiding place was.”

Oleksandr Kraynik did not testify during the hearings, and the court denied the defence’s request for a confrontation.

Serhiy Heidt

Serhiy Heidt, head of a local fishery, was the first to be detained in the case of the “Kherson Nine.” Before his abduction, he only knew the subsequently murdered Vasyl Stetsenko, and was also casually acquainted with Reznik and Kabakov—all of whom worked “on the river.”

In one of his first testimonies, Heidt said that on July 7, 2022, he personally came to Russian security forces to report a planned terrorist attack against official Alexei Kovalev, and that he himself was detained on July 8. In subsequent testimony, Heidt refuted this, stating that he only did not dispute the circumstances of his arrest. However, in court, he said that he was abducted on July 19 and recanted all his previous statements, claiming he had signed them under duress, under pressure from security forces and his state-appointed lawyer.

“I was detained on July 19, 2022, in the ‘Korabel-4’ garage cooperative, when all of them were being searched,” Geidt testified in court. “An officer of the military-civilian administration—that’s how he introduced himself—called me and said he needed to ask me a couple of questions. When I approached, they told me, ‘You need to go to the military-civilian administration.’ They said that for my own safety, I needed to put a bag over my head. They put the bag over my head and took me to the basement.”

After being tortured with electric shocks, Heidt was taken to his business—security forces searched for weapons there, but found nothing. Returning to the basement, the FSB officers beat Heidt again. In the morning, the Kherson resident was taken to his dacha, then to the apartment where his daughter and mother-in-law live, and several of his garages were searched.

“They tortured me again,” Heidt recalls the sequence of events. “‘You’ll tell us everything.’ I said, ‘I have nothing to tell.’”

Several people were already in the basement cell where Heidt was brought there after the torture: “Vlad Gvozdev, who worked at the pier as a guard for me, was there. And another one, my IT guy. And Kabakov was there. And Stetsenko—he was already in an unclear state.”

According to Heidt, after Stetsenko’s death, he and the other captives no longer expected to leave the basement alive. On an empty cigarette pack, they wrote the names of those held there at the time: 24 first and last names. In the fall of 2022, Ukrainian investigators found the pack hidden in the basement.

Heidt arrived at the Lefortovo Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Moscow “with a broken leg” and a severe ear infection, he testified in court. His lawyers requested his medical records from the pretrial detention center, without success.

Yuriy Tavozhniansky

Yuriy Tavozhniansky was kidnapped by Russian security forces on July 28, 2022, when he left his home, his wife, Olga, told the Activatica project. “He said, ‘Olga, I’ll be back in 10 minutes,’ and came out wearing a T-shirt and shorts, with just his keys and phone. Literally 40 minutes later, I started calling him and he already wasn’t answering,” she recalled.

Tavozhniansky was seized as he approached a bus stop near his home, where Kostiantyn Reznik was waiting. The men didn’t know each other, but Tavozhniansky, at the request of his friend Samir Shukyurov, was supposed to give Reznik an envelope containing 5,000 hryvnias (just over $100).

According to the prosecution, “Tavozhniansky’s illegal activity was stopped” on August 2, 2022. Investigators also claim that the former official, on orders from the SBU, monitored the movements of military-civilian administration employees and transferred a total of 15,000 hryvnias ($400) from Shukyurov to Reznik and Kabakov. The details of how and when he did all of this are not specified in the case file.

Before February 24, 2022, Tavozhniansky was the deputy head of the Kherson Port customs office. He claimed to have known SBU officer Samir Shukyurov for many years. They did occasionally communicate via instant messaging and called each other several times, but these were “friendly conversations about nothing,” Tavozhniansky said.

Tavozhniansky also knew Viktor Bulyuk, the first deputy head of the Kherson occupational administration, against whom investigators believe an assassination attempt was being prepared. After the invasion began, Bulyuk offered Tavozhniansky a job, but he declined.

In court, Tavozhniansky testified that, since the beginning of the full-scale war, he had been helping deliver groceries to pensioners and people with disabilities in Kherson. Furthermore, during the occupation, the city had a severe cash shortage. “I was convinced that by handing over money, I was helping a person with a disability buy the medications they needed for their treatment,” the former official said.

The investigation alleges that Tavozhniansky knew of the “criminal intent” of Shukyurov and other members of the “terrorist organisation.” According to the prosecution, while still deputy head of the customs office, Tavozhniansky carried out Shukyurov’s requests, who sometimes asked him to expedite the processing of documents for certain shipments. Tavozhniansky denies this: according to him, Shukyurov never asked him for anything before July 2022.

The man “never held a weapon, worked in the civil service, raised two children, was passionate about cars, and helped his neighbors,” the Activatica project reported. Tavozhniansky says he didn't know any of the other defendants in the case before the kidnapping. He claims that during his two months of captivity, the FSB never conducted any operational searches on him or removed him from the basement.

“As a person with 20 years of public service experience, I understand the constraints and conditions the honorable court is placed under,” the defendant said to Judge Krivtsov at one of the hearings. “And that you have been blamed for ‘legalizing’ all the lawlessness committed first by FSB operatives, then by a group of investigators, and so on. I understand that these trials are now routine for you. But I ask you to adhere to Russian legislation, which, at first glance, is actually good—if you follow it.”

“Failure of proof.” Flaws of the indictment and what the court chose to ignore

Throughout the two-year trial, the lawyers of the “Kherson Nine” tried to remind the court that evidence obtained through torture cannot be used as a basis for the charges and has no legal force.

“I’m staying with the issue of torture. Just look at my client’s teeth, at the unhealed bones in his hands. All the defendants showed their scars in court—here, there... And they showed you: ‘Your Honor, look, I still have marks from the handcuffs!’” Kostiantyn Reznik’s lawyer said during the closing arguments.

The Russian court had no jurisdiction to hear this case at all, since all the defendants were detained in Ukraine and all of them (except Ofitserov) hold Ukrainian citizenship, the defence insisted.

The state prosecutor Aidinov, speaking about the “legitimacy” of the special operations search operations in the Kherson region in the summer of 2022, cited Vladimir Putin’s decree “On national security strategy,” the law on the FSB, and Article 51 of the UN Charter, which enshrines “the right of a state to self-defence.”

“Please tell me, how can the ‘right of a state to self-defence’ establish rules for collecting evidence and using it in criminal proceedings? I won’t even mention whose right to self-defence we’re even talking about here,” one of the lawyers protested.

The attorneys unanimously claimed that the evidence against the defendants was not confirmed either during the preliminary investigation or in court, and that the entire indictment is based solely on assumptions. “The prosecution is obligated to provide the court with precise answers: when, where, in what manner, by what actions, by what means of communication, by what messages, with what evidence…” one of the lawyers said during closing arguments. “But the prosecution simply replaces the facts with a description of ‘criminal’ activity! They use broad brushstrokes! Referenced to operational materials that cannot be verified without questioning those who were present when they were recorded.”

The court denied most of the defence’s motions. For example, the lawyers requested that the FSB operatives who conducted the operational search and the witnesses whose names are listed in the case materials be summoned to court, because all the defendants stated that no witnesses were present during the investigation. They also requested mobile phone billing records, data from private and public CCTV cameras, and an examination of the metadata of photographs from the case files—but the court denied all of these motions.

“All events take place in the Kherson region, and that seems normal. But when it comes to calling witnesses from the Kherson region, we can’t because it’s not controlled by the Russian Federation,” one of the defense attorneys criticized the prosecution’s position.

The case contains many inconsistencies and gaps. For example, according to the case files, “Serhiy Kabakov’s activities were stopped” on August 2, 4, and 5, 2022. However, until October 6, he, like the other defendants in the case, had no procedural status.

FSB officers themselves refer to their presence in Kherson from February to October 2022 as either “counterintelligence” or “investigative operations.” The officers demonstrate remarkable time management, compiling multi-page reports within minutes of each other. They do not describe how the defendants in the case received instructions from SBU officers to blow up pro-Russian officials; they mention a chat called “Groceries” where the “accomplices” communicated, but provide no evidence of its existence.

The defense believes that the investigation has failed to prove the existence of an organised “terrorist group” at all—most of the defendants in the case didn’t know each other before their abduction, didn’t communicate via instant messaging, and didn’t call each other.

“This is where what's called a ‘failure of proof’ begins,” one of the lawyers emphasized. “The indictment in the case is constructed in such a way that it first creates a general ideological background, and then arbitrarily inserts the names of the defendants.”

“Everything the state prosecutor said boils down to the formula ‘war justifies everything,’” another defense attorney echoed his colleague. “There’s a wonderful saying: war to some is boon to others. Now we understand who benefits: FSB officers, who can do whatever they want, and then war will erase everything. This is wrong; it shouldn’t be this way. If we have even the slightest respect for the state of which we are citizens, we must prevent such things. We cannot allow this shameful lawlessness. It disgraces my country, of which I am a citizen.”

The criminal case is “legal fiction” and “the investigator’s fantasies,” the defendants said in their closing arguments. “The criminal group is those who created the materials for this case. They should be on trial, not us!” Serhiy Heidt practically shouted at the judge and the state prosecutor.

Yuriy Tavozhniansky, who at the beginning of the trial called on Judge Krivtsov to “adhere to the law,” admitted during the closing arguments that he had lost hope. “A traffic cop collects far more evidence of guilt for crossing a double solid line than the investigators accusing me of international terrorism,” he said. “Another principle of criminal proceedings has emerged in the Russian Federation, and it’s widely used. It’s called ‘conviction in acquittal.’ The gist of it is that you’re not acquitting us, innocent people, but those who fabricated this case.”

The prosecution lacks “honest and admissible evidence,” Serhiy Kovalsky said during the closing arguments, reminding the court once again of the torture in the National Police headquarters basement on Liuteranska Street.

Judge Krivtsov listened silently to all the defendants’ statements.

“Dear everyone, we are here to do time. You and your children are here to live. Thank you,” Kostiantyn Reznik said in closing.

On January 30, 2026, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced the defendants in the “Kherson Nine” case to terms ranging from 14 to 20 years in a maximum-security penal colony, with the first five years to be served in prison.

20 years in prison for Kostiantyn Reznik and Serhiy Kabakov; 18 for Oleh Bohdanov and Yuriy Tavozhniansky; 17 for Serhiy Heidt, Serhiy Kovalsky, and Serhiy Ofitserov; 14 for Yuriy Kayov and Denys Lialka.

With Mika Golubovsky, Elena Dymova, and Pavel Vasilyev

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev