On May 31, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don will start considering the case against five foreigners who, according to the Russian side, fought in the Azov battalion. Information about this appeared in the case card on the website of the court.
Swedish citizen Matthias Gustavsson, Croatian citizen Vekoslav Prebeg and three British citizens John Harding, Dylan Healy and Andrew Hill are accused of being trained for the purpose of carrying out terrorism and mercenarism (Article 205.3 of the Criminal Code and part 3 of Article 359 of the Criminal Code ). The press service of the court told TASS that they were taken prisoner in Russian-occupied Mariupol, including at Azovstal.
On June 9 last year, the Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed DPR sentenced to death three foreigners on charges of mercenarism — British citizens Aiden Eslin and Sean Pinner and Moroccan Saadoun Brahim. All of them said that they joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine even before the start of the war, which means that they should be kept as prisoners of war. On August 15, the same court began hearing the cases against Gustavsson, Prebeg, Harding, Hill and Healy, with the next hearing due in October.
At the end of September, 215 Ukrainian prisoners of war were exchanged for 55 Russian servicemen and Viktor Medvedchuk. At the same time, a Saudi official told Reuters that Russia, through the mediation of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, had released ten prisoners of war, including citizens of the United States, Britain, Sweden, Croatia and Morocco. After that, they were taken by plane to Riyadh.
TASS does not indicate in its note that in Rostov-on-Don the servicemen who have already been exchanged will be tried in absentia.
In April 2022, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine opened a criminal case due to the disappearance of two British volunteers who were passing through a checkpoint near Zaporozhye. The Guardian wrote that we are talking about Paul Urey and Dylan Healy. On July 10, Yuri died in captivity in the DPR.
As claimed in the self-proclaimed republic, the cause of his death was «illness and stress.» Ukraine, which returned Yuri's body a month and a half later, reported signs of torture. After his release, John Harding gave an interview to the British newspaper Daily Mail. According to him, they tortured him and other prisoners and did not provide medical assistance.
In May, the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don received cases against 33 fighters of Ukrainian units of the Medvedi DShG and the “Medvedi” brigade Azov. The first card contains the names of 24 soldiers from the «Azov», the second — the names of nine members of the «Bears».
At least five people mentioned in these cards have already returned to Ukraine during the prisoner exchanges in September and May. These are the unit commander Alexander Kravtsov and his members Vladimir Gapych, Alexander Zhuromskas, Vadim Kitar, as well as Dmitry Labinsky from Azov.
It is not known exactly how many Ukrainian soldiers the Russian authorities are going to judge in absentia.