Ukrainian human rights activists and members of UnMode Yanina Stemkovskaya and Yulia Kogan, despite the war, continue to help people in prison. It would seem that at such a time there is no time for prisoners, when Russian troops continue to kill peaceful citizens of the country and destroy cities.
But the position of a real human rights defender is that assistance and legal support should be provided to everyone who needs it, no matter what. Therefore, all the days of the war, Yanina and Yulia are always in touch with prisons and colonies, in contact with lawyers and the administration of penitentiary institutions and regularly buy necessary food and medicines for their money and send parcels to convicts in different regions of Ukraine.
Yulia Kogan and Yanina Stemkovskaya talk about the current situation in places of detention in Ukraine in connection with the war and what problems they face in their work.
Yulia Kogan, Odessa
Despite the wartime, the work continues and is gaining momentum. Since for many years of work, everyone already knows me well, they transmit my contacts by “gypsy” mail. Now I am constantly being asked for help. What I’ve been doing lately is meeting guys who were being released. They came out of our 14th colony, from the pre-trial detention center as well. I have already met more than a dozen people.
Everyone comes out – and everyone has their own problems. Who should go where. But only one had two hundred hryvnias, all the others go out without money at all, without anything. This means that people need to organize where to live, find money for the road. Even to get to the train station is already 10 hryvnia. And there are those who have served ten years – they do not understand anything at all what is happening now and how everything works. I remember myself, it was so inconvenient for me to hand over the fare in transport. So what to say about the real day when there is a war. That’s why I go to the train station to get tickets, arrange accommodation in hotels, and a lot of things. Each person has their own story and needs for help.
With access to medical care in places of detention, the story is like this – now there is a hotline on these issues, I also take calls. People call from all over Ukraine if something is missing. I talk and tell you how to solve this or that problem. There is substitution therapy and antiretroviral therapy in general. In the occupied cities, it is also possible to organize so far. I know how in one colony doctors “partisan”, help prisoners with access to these drugs at their own risk.
In general, the war has made things worse in the penitentiary system, but this is understandable. In my opinion, it would be logical to let people go. It’s scary to sit in a colony that can be captured by the invaders. They kill civilians, and they won’t stand on ceremony with prisoners at all. And there are such cases. If we talk about the attitude of the administration towards prisoners, then it has become more humane. There is an understanding that everyone is in the same boat, help and support are felt, but even here, of course, it depends on the person.
I am currently conducting several strategic cases, and several more have appeared recently. A very important story for me now is with the prisoner Igor G. He is in the 49th colony in Kropyvnytskyi. You need to send a lawyer there, and in connection with wartime, it’s almost unrealistic, five hours from Odessa. We need to look there.
The situation with him is this – Odessa. To go to earn money in Russia, put on an object, earned a lot of money. They were lying with the man he worked for.
As often happens, when I was going to leave, I didn’t want to give it back. As a result, serious bodily injuries. Sat down in Russia. Later deported to Ukraine. He has serious health problems – diabetic in severe form, falls into a coma. He had to be sent to the Lviv region, where people with diabetes are kept, and he was transferred to tuberculosis patients. And to date, they cannot redirect him to the colony where he needs to go. He has a high dosage of insulin. Plus, a head injury, in connection with which epilepsy attacks. Doctors, when they see him, say – oh, you’re still alive. To be in touch with him all the time, I replenish his account on the phone myself. I support you as much as I can. And not just him alone.
Yanina Stemkovskaya, Poltava
In Ukraine, the situation in places of detention is very different now. For example, in Kherson, the territory is completely occupied. And at the beginning of March there was information that the Chechens had made their headquarters there from the pre-trial detention center. And then our ombudsman came out and said: “Don’t worry, all prisoners have been evacuated in the temporarily occupied territories.” And I was in touch all the time with Kherson and with the prisoners who continued to be in this pre-trial detention center. That is, a completely different information that was broadcast by the Ombudsman.
At the same time, many lawyers with whom we cooperate also questioned my words. For my part, I raised this issue, that we need to sort it out, because people remain there. We started to sort it out – I provided the phones of those with whom I was in touch. We found out that people continue to be there. We managed to contact them, and the situation there was terrible. The guys were given half a bag of crackers for several cameras for three days, and it was all from food. And the fact is that people are still there, in the occupied territories. I have a connection with them, but unfortunately, nothing can be done yet – not to evacuate, not to provide some kind of legal assistance. Unfortunately, this is still the case with the occupied territories.
An example of a prisoner P. from there, with whom I am currently working. It is located in the Kherson region. He was transferred there immediately after the new year. He needed to extend the tuberculosis disability group, but the war broke out, and he hung there. I’m in touch with him every day. So far, the only thing I could do for him is to transfer 100 euros. At least they will buy for themselves and everything that is possible.
In this case, an answer came from the ECHR, we managed to move before the war. But he came to the Kirovograd correctional colony, where he had served his sentence before. Therefore, no one knows what is in this answer. The prisoner is in the Kherson region, and the letter is in the Kirovograd colony. Unfortunately, there is no way to evacuate anyone from there, and I don’t know what will happen there next. No one knows. The main thing is that they would at least stay alive, because there is a lot of shooting and a lot of it.
If you take Kharkiv, it’s a big city there, and if the convicts were right near the combat positions, they were evacuated, taken to different zones. And some of those with whom I work, they are far enough away from the fighting, they stay in place. The only thing is there is a basement that serves as a bomb shelter for them. We wanted to initiate the evacuation, but we need at least one power of attorney, and now it is impossible to take any power of attorney there – neither by mail, nor by couriers, nothing, because there are military operations. I’m in touch with those guys too. Today one called – alive and well, thank God.
I have prisoner M. there. He was transferred to Kharkiv, to the 25th colony, and, as I said, they are not being evacuated. Now the lawyer has asked to get acquainted with his case. There is a situation that different witnesses come to court hearings for the same episode, since the case is fabricated. We are currently at the stage of drafting a cassation appeal.
It is more difficult with the Donetsk region. There was an evacuation from the city of Bakhmut a week ago. There are a lot of life convicts there, they were taken away. All the women were brought to Poltava. And not in the pre-trial detention center, but immediately to the colony, although many have not finished their trial there and there is no term of imprisonment yet. They were sent to the colony for security reasons, because there is a bomb shelter there. As for the other prisoners from Bakhmut, from the “lifers”, I am in touch with one, he wrote to me that five or six people were taken to one place, five or six to another: there is Kryvyi Rih, the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Vinnytsia region, and other regions.
From there , too , another case of mine – the girl T. She was in Bakhmut, two weeks ago she was transferred to Poltava. She is now in the 65th colony. I also bought and sent her a package, because there are also health problems there. She got it, everything is fine now. Then she talked to the deputy head of this correctional colony, who refused her parole because she had no incentives during the time of serving her sentence. And she had no incentives, because she could not work due to her health condition. Even before the war, they wrote that she needed an assessment of her health by non–prison doctors. We managed to take her to a civilian hospital just before the outbreak of hostilities, where she was told the cause of her health problems. And the reason is that when she was operated on in the prison hospital, her vital organs were damaged by negligence. And so we decided how to make it possible for her to get out on parole or something else, due to the fact that there is a war going on, that she has served the prescribed two-thirds of the term, etc. I’m afraid just to think ahead, but I think we will pull her out.
If we talk about work, then, firstly, it has become much more. Secondly, the basic human needs have literally come to the fore, even with whom I have worked on strategic cases – now no one wants to sue, because there is literally nothing to eat, if it is exaggerated to say. Now people really need direct assistance, because even the humanitarian aid that is available, it reaches places of detention in very limited quantities. Therefore, I try to help as much as I can and what I can, by my own efforts – I send money, buy medicines and food and also send everything there. It is impossible, when you work directly with people, not to hear and ignore their requests, on which, in fact, their life depends today.
I have a prisoner in my work , L. His sentence came into force and there was an appeal during this time. Now we are collecting documents for a cassation appeal, because his lawyer wrote him an appeal, but he did not see it. We also received a fresh medical report for him, and now I am collecting the necessary medications for his life. He needs enzymes, hepatoprotectors and much more, for this I allocate him money from my other small projects.
Or here is an example of how it works today. We have already submitted during the war – the courts work where there is no military action – a request for parole in one of the cases. But we still don’t know whether it was considered or not. In general, we did not hope that a person would be released on parole, but in order to file with the ECHR, we needed any solution to ensure that we used all possible options for protection within the country. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to find out anything online, I’ll try it live. I’m used to finishing everything.