On May 16, 2022, around nine in the morning, in the village of Shtepovka, Sumy District, Sumy Oblast, pensioner Lyudmila Vazhinskaya was deemed by the court to have “committed a criminal offense against the peace, security of humanity, and international order,” under Part 1, Article 436-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (propaganda of war).
That day, from 9 to 10 a.m., people gathered in a queue for milk in the center of Shtepovka. Among them was Lyudmila Vazhinskaya, who, like many people of her age in Ukraine, was born in the USSR, specifically in the Fominka farmstead, Tatsinsky District, Rostov Oblast, in the Russian Federation.
A man and two women were standing in line, actively discussing rumors that Russian soldiers had “cut up and raped” a one-year-old child. Lyudmila Ilyinichna suggested that her fellow villagers not believe the rumors and said that the authorities should sit down at the negotiating table and end the war so that in Shtepovka and other places “it wouldn’t be like in Donbas.” Instead of discussing the possibility of ending the bloodshed, the man (who lives five houses away from Lyudmila Ilyinichna) shouted that the Russians should be “cut up and scattered in pieces throughout the plantations.” The pensioner, being Russian by nationality, perceived these words as a threat. She replied that the man was “insane” and a “fascist.”
Those gathered started shouting that she was a traitor, “betraying Ukraine,” and so on. The woman tried to explain the need for negotiations and a freeze on the conflict, but in the heat of the hysteria, no one listened anymore. Then she got into her car and drove away. Her fellow villagers ran to the village elder to complain that Vazhinskaya was suggesting negotiating with Russia after the events in Irpin and Bucha, which, in their conviction, was unacceptable.
The village elder called the military commissar, who then contacted the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine). For two or three days, until investigators arrived at the pensioner’s house, local residents came to her at night and threatened her.
She shared her fears and anxieties with the SBU officers – Lyudmila Ilyinichna thought she would be killed, simply for calling for peace talks. But the SBU officers detained not the those who threatened her, but the pensioner, who, as they wrote, “is a pro-Russian individual who supports the aggressive policy of the Russian Federation and accuses the Ukrainian authorities of unleashing and escalating the conflict between Ukraine and the Russian Federation since 2014… with the aim of swaying others to her position, she fostered anti-state and pro-Russian sentiments among her audience.”
The court qualified these actions under Part 1, Article 436-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (justification of war), “including by portraying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine as an internal civil conflict.” Lyudmila Ilyinichna tried to explain to the court that she was used to living peacefully with people of other nationalities, as they did in the Soviet Union, that her first husband was Polish, and that she was shocked when her fellow villagers began calling for the brutal murder of all Russians, since she herself is Russian by nationality. The pensioner even said that during interrogation she had asked the investigators to deal with these threats against her, but no one listened. The accused pointed out that she could not have imagined that talking about negotiations with Putin was a crime. She stated that she condemns the war, does not want her house destroyed, but believes that the war began in 2014 because “Poroshenko failed to properly negotiate about Donbas.” According to her, she only told people that, for the sake of ending the bloodshed, it would be worthwhile to sit down at the negotiating table and not repeat Poroshenko’s mistakes, but they interpreted her words as they wanted.
One of the witnesses stated that the crowd was discussing how Russia was exporting Ukrainian grain by car, and the accused, referring to Russian television programs, denied this, saying that Ukrainians were killing each other, and that Biden had exported the grain. However, she didn’t remember Vazhinskaya’s exact words, but considered her a collaborator who should be sent to Russia. Another witness allegedly heard from the accused that if the Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts had been given to Russia in 2014, there would have been no war. A third said that Vazhinskaya argued that Ukrainians themselves were to blame for what was happening, as they should have resolved disagreements peacefully. When the witness remarked that it’s impossible to resolve anything peacefully when you’re being killed and raped, Vazhinskaya allegedly retorted that Ukrainians were shooting at themselves, but the witness couldn’t recall the exact words.
The village elder of Shtepovka informed the court that people had approached him demanding that he address the situation, as Vazhinskaya was saying that Russia was not involved in the events in Bucha and Irpin, and that the war began as an internal Ukrainian conflict between Kyiv and Donbas.
No recording of the discussion that took place in the milk queue was made or presented. To clarify the matter, a linguistic expert was called in. However, the discussion was in Russian, and the expert invited was an associate professor at the Department of Ukrainian Language and Literature at Sumy State Pedagogical University. The second problem with the examination lies in its subject. If there is no written or audio recording of the text, what is there to investigate? They decided to investigate the witnesses’ testimonies, who themselves stated they couldn’t reproduce Vazhinskaya’s words verbatim.
Specifically, the following phrases were subjected to the examination: “What are you watching? You should watch Russian channels, they show the truth,” “It’s Ukrainians who are exporting the grain, not Russia; Russia has plenty of its own grain,” “If Donbas had been given away in 2014, there wouldn’t be a war now,” “They’re shooting at their own people, then blaming Russia,” “It’s not true what happened in Bucha, the Russians didn’t shoot or rape anyone,” etc. These are the words the witnesses heard and remembered, not the accused’s words directly. A Ukrainian language expert analyzed the Russian-language text, the accuracy of which is highly questionable. Moreover, the linguist himself stated in his conclusions that the witnesses could not accurately reproduce the accused’s words.
Nevertheless, his conclusion was as follows: “The author justifies, acknowledges the legitimacy of, and denies the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, in particular by portraying the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine as an internal civil conflict.” How one can simultaneously justify and deny the same phenomenon is a question that the judges should have asked the expert. But they didn’t. They also didn’t ask on what basis a Candidate of Philology was making legal conclusions: “The justification and acknowledgment of the legitimacy of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which began in 2014, is beyond doubt.”
This expert opinion formed the basis of the verdict – six months’ arrest for a pensioner for speaking about the necessity of peace, criticizing radical nationalism, and questioning the veracity of official propaganda.
