In early January 2024, a court in Zhytomyr sentenced 82-year-old Afghan war veteran and writer Yuriy Chernyoshov to 15 years imprisonment with confiscation of property. The investigation claims he engaged in espionage for the Wagner PMC, but case materials suggest possible provocation by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine).
Yuriy Chernyoshov is a Soviet colonel, a missile officer and geodetic engineer by profession. In the 1980s, he served in Afghanistan as the chief of artillery reconnaissance for the 40th Army, participated in 17 combat operations, and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. From 1987-1988, he was an advisor to the chief of staff of the Yemeni rocket forces and artillery. He retired in 1991 and pursued journalism and literature, publishing in Ukrainian newspapers and the Russian magazine “Army.” From the 2000s to 2010s, he published several books: collections of short stories about Afghanistan (“Shuravi” and “Fire on Oneself”), novels (“No Peace” and “Millstones”), and a collection of essays “Of One Blood.” He is a member of the Interregional Union of Writers of Ukraine.
Ukrainian media labeled Chernyoshov’s views expressed in his books (especially the 2016 collection, which questioned Galicia’s role in the disintegration of Ukrainian statehood) as “pro-Russian,” leading to close SBU scrutiny after the Maidan revolution.
The 81-year-old Chernyoshov was arrested in March 2023, charged under Article 111, Part 2 (treason) with transmitting “intelligence about video surveillance systems in Zhytomyr” to a Wagner PMC representative. This was stated by Irina Martynyuk, spokesperson for the Zhytomyr SBU. What does this mean, and what intelligence could a very elderly pensioner gather? According to the SBU spokesperson, in July 2022, a Wagner PMC representative recruited Chernyoshov via VKontakte. “The suspect then allegedly gathered intelligence on the movement of Ukrainian Armed Forces units and sought personal data of the active command staff of Ukrainian troops in the region. He also recorded the coordinates of street surveillance systems near government and law enforcement buildings, transmitting this data to Wagner via established electronic communication channels in the form of photographs and marked maps.” Martynyuk claims the SBU documented the man’s actions step-by-step and arrested him on the eve of his alleged escape abroad.
First, Yuriy Chernyoshov was arrested at home, and there were no reports from the investigation about his intention to flee the country at that time. Furthermore, considering his age and health, on April 3, 2023, the court did not send the pensioner to pre-trial detention but set bail at 214,000 hryvnias. If there had been evidence of a desire to flee abroad, Ukrainian judges would never have made such a decision. However, after paying bail on April 4th, Chernyoshov did attempt to cross the border with Belarus, where he was rearrested and subsequently sent to pre-trial detention. In court, Chernyoshov explained that after the criminal prosecution began, he feared for the life and health of his family, so he decided to go to a friend across the border, while his wife, he hoped, would leave Ukraine through Moldova. His wife confirmed that after the bail payment, her husband ordered her to immediately leave Ukraine via Moldova, not to call him, and that he would find her in Moldova later. But this all happened *after* the first arrest and release on bail, not before, as the SBU spokesperson claims.
Before considering the substance of the accusation, let’s again note the SBU spokesperson’s statement that Chernyoshov’s actions were meticulously documented by the security service. This is important.
So, on July 18, 2022, Chernyoshov began communicating with someone using the account “Igor Perov” on the VKontakte social network. The prosecution believes this account was used by a Wagner PMC member named Shargan. The pensioner allegedly agreed to help Perov obtain military information and chose the pseudonym “Snarov” for this purpose.
For a whole month after the alleged recruitment, nothing happened. From September 22, 2022, to February 21, 2023, the 81-year-old Chernyoshov allegedly conducted various intelligence activities for Russia and transmitted data to the Wagner operative via Telegram. Specifically, Chernyoshov was charged with sending a photo of the barracks of the 95th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine taken from his apartment window on September 26th; a photo of a map showing the location of a combined arms training ground on October 12th; a photo of a map showing the location of the SBU in the Zhytomyr region on October 20th; a message with information about the engineering defenses of the SBU building on October 21st; a message with information about the movement of Ukrainian military equipment through Zhytomyr on January 24, 2023; and, most absurdly, a report on the inspection of the area around the Zhytomyr City Council building for the presence of foreign armed forces and a message that none were found in late February.
What did the pensioner actually do? He marked the location of two well-known objects (the training ground and the SBU building) on a map, easily found online. He photographed the also well-known barracks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from his apartment window. He wrote about the military equipment and sandbags he saw in the city, which were located at the entrance to the SBU building. He walked around the city hall and found no foreign military personnel. That’s all. Chernyoshov transmitted this “intelligence” to a certain “Igor Perov,” whom the investigation, on some basis, considers a “Wagnerite” named Shargan.
If this is all true and we approach the matter formally, Yuriy Chernyoshov did indeed violate the law by sending data, however insignificant, related to the military to a representative of the opposing armed forces. However, experience with similar cases requires answers to several questions:
- When and how did the SBU learn about the crime? 2) How did the SBU know that Perov was Shargan?
- Why was Chernyoshov arrested almost a year after the alleged criminal activity began, if, according to the SBU spokesperson, his actions were meticulously documented?
- Why is the transmitted data either publicly known, appears harmless to Ukraine, or is clearly absurd (foreign troops near the Zhytomyr city hall)?
- Why is there no damage or victims in a treason case involving the transmission of data to the enemy about military objects?
To try to answer these questions, we need to look at the sequence of actions documented by the SBU.
According to case materials, the offense was entered into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations (URPI) on January 17, 2023. This means all alleged criminal episodes – except for the equipment movement and foreign troop surveillance near Zhytomyr City Hall – occurred before the criminal case was officially opened.
Furthermore, the City Hall incident represents the only instance where Chernyshov allegedly traveled to conduct surveillance. The source of information about this alleged crime remains unclear. Typically, such cases originate from an SBU operative’s report, but in this instance, not even such basic documentation has been presented.
On February 1, 2023, an investigative judge authorized surveillance of Chernyshov and the extraction of information from his phone and social media. According to the February 23 protocol, the surveillance revealed that on February 21, Chernyshov left his home, boarded a minibus, got off at the “Ukraine Cinema” stop, walked to the city council, then returned home and sent information about the absence of foreign military personnel at the city council. According to the February 24 protocol, the examination of his phone and social media revealed text messages where Chernyshov forwarded all the information mentioned above. In the correspondence, the “Wagnerite” thanked the pensioner for the work done and promised decent financial compensation in the future, while Chernyshov replied: “I just want to live out my remaining days in a decent country, not in a country of Bandera thugs.”
At this stage, three conclusions can be drawn: 1) Chernyshov’s political position is clearly “pro-Russian”; 2) he transmitted information that either contains publicly available data or does not help Russia and does not harm Ukraine; 3) the surveillance warrant was obtained immediately before the last “criminal” episode, when Chernyshov went out to collect data for the only time.
How did the SBU determine that “Igor Perov” was “Wagnerite Shargan”? On March 17, 2023, an SBU investigator opened “Igor Perov’s” VKontakte page and found a photograph of a person in a military uniform “characteristic of Wagner PMC mercenaries.” The investigator then turned to the “Myrotvorets” website (which is not a Ukrainian state database, is not registered in Ukraine, is not verified by anyone, and, with proper legal representation, is not accepted by courts as evidence), where, using the photograph from VKontakte, he found a page with the same photograph dedicated to “Wagnerite Shargan.” On July 5, an expert who received the photographs concluded that they depicted the same person.
The last protocol of interest is the examination of items seized during a search of Chernyshov’s apartment. His laptop contained maps of Ukraine “with violations of territorial integrity, suggesting the inclusion of Ukrainian territories into the Russian Federation,” a file with a letter from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense titled “Losses of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” a file containing the poem “To My Former Ukraine” (a poem by the accused himself), and correspondence with his son on Viber, in which Chernyshov says that Russia has occupied several cities in the Kherson region permanently, his son argues with this thesis, and the accused writes: “If the Euro-Bandera have messed with your head, that’s your choice, and don’t try to drag us into it.”
Naturally, none of this was included in the indictment, but these materials were used by the court to characterize the accused as having “anti-Ukrainian” sentiments and to provide the radical public with a characterization that automatically removes his case from the realm of discussion, turning Chernyshov in public opinion into a “collaborator” and “traitor,” regardless of whether criminal actions are actually proven in court.
So, we have a strange recruitment via VK of a very elderly person with pro-Russian views known throughout the city. The person doesn’t want money, but agrees to help for ideological reasons. The indictment does not mention anything about collecting data on surveillance systems in Zhytomyr (as stated by the SBU spokesperson). The information transmitted by Chernyshov was publicly known, and no intelligence gathering was required to obtain it. He collected it without leaving his home. The documents do not explain how the SBU learned about these actions, but the SBU spokesperson claims that all of Chernyshov’s actions were documented step-by-step. However, for six months, nobody bothered Chernyshov, although during that time he sent the enemy a lot of data that the prosecution considers to be military-strategic. The link between the “Igor Perov” account and “Wagnerite Shargan” was discovered illegally and therefore cannot be considered proven—the “Myrotvorets” database is not a verified state database of Ukraine and cannot be used by the court as evidence. It is unclear how the investigator searched the “Myrotvorets” website for the page of “Wagnerite Shargan” using a photograph, given that the website search is text-based and requires entering full name. This point naturally raises suspicion that the SBU investigator already knew who to look for and, possibly, the VK account “Igor Perov” was controlled by the SBU and used for provocation. This is a hypothesis, and it cannot be proven without special investigative actions, but there are objective grounds to believe so. In any case, all doubts in court should be interpreted in favor of the accused.
The hypothesis is supported by the fact that the case against Chernyshov was opened immediately before the only episode when “Igor Perov” gave the pensioner the task of going into the field to see if there were any foreign military personnel near the city hall. The task is absurd a priori, but it’s not difficult to deceive an elderly person. At the same time, the court issues a warrant for surveillance, Chernyshov is monitored, and the conclusion is drawn that he carried out intelligence activities (everything he did without leaving his apartment was very difficult to call that). This becomes the basis for a search (the SBU knows what to look for, since all actions, if we believe the spokesperson, were documented), during which correspondence with the assignment is found, and the arrest is made.
Chernyshov pleaded not guilty. Most importantly, he stated that he considers the incident a provocation by the SBU, a conclusion we reached by examining the documents. We have already mentioned that after the Maidan, in 2016, the writer Chernyshov published the book “Of One Blood,” which discussed the issue of nationalism. You can read the book here.
For example, it contains this passage:
“And if children in a kindergarten in Galicia shout ‘Putin is a …!’, then how should we raise the next generation, what should we instill in them? It turns out that they finally found the national idea they had been searching for so long—pathological Russophobia. Can anyone imagine a nation whose national idea is built on hatred?”
The publication of the book served as a pretext for the search. That is, SBU officers came to Chernyshov several years before his arrest in March 2023. The book was confiscated (there is a corresponding protocol), and the military pensioner was caught as an unreliable person.
Chernyshov stated in court that in July 2022,a stranger spontaneously sent him a friend request. The defendant claimed he didn’t know this person’s identity, origin, or affiliation – though he assumed it was likely someone from Russian military forces at the front. He insisted he had no knowledge of any Wagner Group connection.
According to Chernyshov, the profile contained no Wagner uniform photo during their communications. The pensioner alleges SBU officers later attached the photo of “Wagner fighter Sharkan” to this VKontakte page, sourcing it from the Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) website.
The interlocutor behaved calmly, so the pensioner engaged in a dialogue—he was simply interested in sharing his opinion and hearing a different perspective from the other side of the front. Furthermore, Chernyoshov stated that lately he felt like he was living under occupation in Ukraine, and was offended by the SBU’s conduct—the search and seizure of his book, which seemed like persecution for his views and opinions.
Then the interlocutor disappeared and only reappeared in Telegram at the end of September. Chernyoshov stated that the photos he sent of the Ukrainian Armed Forces barracks and tourist maps with his own markings were taken without leaving his home. This is true and is confirmed by the investigation’s documents. He did not pass on any important information; everything was publicly available. It’s true that the pensioner was asked to inspect the area near the city council, and he agreed because he was going for a walk in the city center anyway, but he saw nothing and reported as such.
Chernyoshov believes that the dialogue with the provocative interlocutor was a mistake that led him to the courtroom, but he committed no crimes and had no intention of committing any. His lawyer, Vladimir Nesterets, insisted on this—all the data transmitted is available on the internet, and Chernyoshov’s actions caused no harm to the state. However, Prosecutor Igor Shvets presented a completely different argument. Firstly, he insisted that Chernyoshov knew to whom he was transmitting data about “the location of military units and critical infrastructure facilities.” Secondly, he noted that for the crime to be classified as treason, harm does not necessarily have to be caused; intent to cause harm is sufficient, and he believed such intent existed.
We see that this is conjecture—Chernyoshov did not confess to criminal intent, and the correspondence presented to the court with the “Wagnerite” does not indicate a desire to harm Ukraine. But without accepting this conjecture as fact, the accusation collapses. On the one hand, the motive of aiding Russia (Chernyoshov did not know he was communicating with a “Wagnerite,” but assumed his interlocutor was some kind of Russian soldier) might seem obvious, but on the other hand, everything must be proven in court. In this case, the transmission of data prohibited from being transmitted, even if publicly available, is conditionally proven. However, neither the identity of the recipient nor the defendant’s motive has been proven. That is, if there is no harm (and there is none), and the prosecutor explains the qualification of treason as the intention to harm Ukraine, then this intention must be proven, not simply asserted. After all, if there is no intent and the identity of the recipient as a representative of the enemy has not been proven in accordance with the law, the crime can be classified as the illegal dissemination of information about the Armed Forces of Ukraine during wartime (Part 1, Article 114-2). This carries a sentence of three to five years, not fifteen.
However, Judge Sofia Kostenko refused to investigate further, stating that all the defendant’s testimony was an attempt to avoid punishment, and on January 4th sentenced Yuri Chernyoshov to 15 years imprisonment with confiscation of all property and deprivation of his rank as colonel.
“Where is your conscience, fascists?” Chernyoshov shouted from behind the glass of the “aquarium” during the announcement of the verdict, which can be considered a life sentence.
Instead of a final statement, he read a poem in Ukrainian, apparently his own, about how those who started the war hide behind people like him, concluding with the words: “Prosecutor, pray, you scum!”
