Russia Sentences Azov Brigade Member Serhii Mykhailenko to Life Imprisonment and Sends him to Siberi
Serhii Mykhailenko is an Azov Brigade soldier. He left the Azovstal plant together with his fellow soldiers on May 20, 2022. A quick exchange, as had been promised, did not happen; and over a thousand Ukrainian defenders had to experience all the horrors of Russian captivity. In addition to poor conditions of detention and tortures, show trials were staged over prisoners of war. They were judged for crimes they had not committed. The so-called Supreme Court of the DPR sentenced Mykhailenko to life imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony. The man was sent to Siberia to serve his illegal sentence.
Mykhailenko was 16 years old when the first battles for Mariupol began in 2014. The boy remembered the fear he felt when missiles were flying, and he could not do anything. Having come of age, he began preparing for the army. In 2019, he joined the Azov Brigade.
“One winter evening, he wrote to me that he was leaving Kharkiv, where he studied, for Mariupol. The academic year was in full swing, so I did not understand why he was doing this,” says Tamara, Serhii’s wife.
“I transferred to extramural courses. I want to join Azov,” she heard in response.
At that time, the woman knew nothing about the unit, and when she found information on the Internet, she was very surprised.
“Are you serious? Into the service?”
Serhii replied that he had been preparing for this for two years, so Tamara had no choice but to support her husband.
“Serhii is a very interesting and educated person. And he is also very kind and always ready to help people with whatever they need help with, offer support if someone feels bad,” Tamara says with a smile on her face.
Serhii Mykhailenko and his wife Tamara Photo: family archive
On the eve of the full-scale war, Serhii was studying in Lviv Oblast, while Tamara was waiting for him in Mariupol. In May 2022, the couple was supposed to get married, but it was not meant to be.
On February 25, 2022, Serhii went back to his hometown that had already started turning into hell.
“I moved in with Serhii’s grandmother. Her apartment was not far from the Azovstal plant. It was scary to look out the window. The night turned into day, the fighting did not halt, and there were constant air raids. After that, I struggled with panic attacks for another year,” Tamara says.
“All these planes were flying to Azovstal, and I understood that my Serhii was somewhere there. I saw people going up to the 16th floor and jumping down because they could not stand it. People went crazy because there was nothing to eat. The hardest times were for the elderly and children.”
On March 16, 2022, when Russia hit the Mariupol Drama Theater, Tamara was nearby and miraculously survived. She saw bloody people with limbs torn off, but she could not help: the city had run out of medicines.
Two days later she left, and in a few days Serhii called her. The conversation was emotional. They cried, asked each other for forgiveness, confessed their love. Serhii said that he would soon return home. He asked Tamara to cook him borscht, because he got tired of eating only Snickers bars.
“I was not very good at cooking borscht, but for the sake of Serhii I signed up for courses, and now I can make a perfect borscht,” the girl says.
Serhii was wounded during a combat mission in Mariupol. He and two other fellow soldiers were taken to Rusty — that is how they called a medical hospital at Azovstal, equipped in one of the bunkers. One guy was lost. Serhii’s legs were injured by fragments. Tamara does not know if they were pulled out.
Leaving Azovstal
May 16, 2022 was the last time when Serhii Mykhailenko called Tamara. He told her about the order to leave Azovstal. The guy assured his wife that everything would be fine, that he would return home soon, so they should prepare for the wedding.
Serhii Mykhailenko (in the center) leaving Azovstal
In July 2022, enormous explosions sounded in the Olenivka Penal Colony, where Ukrainian prisoners of war were held, and a barracks was damaged where about 200 captured Azov Brigade members had been transferred the day before. A month later, the Supreme Court of Russia recognized Azov Brigade to be a terrorist organization. It became clear that Russia was not really willing to return Azov Brigade members to Ukraine.
When Serhii was in Olenivka, there was little information about him. On September 21, 2022, an exchange took place, and, as a result, many Azov Brigade members were released. Then Tamara learned that Serhii had been transported to the Donetsk Pre-Trial Detention Center. In May 2023, there was another exchange. Serhii’s fellow soldier, who was released, said that Serhii had been often interrogated by officers, trying to accuse him of crimes against civilians.
“In June 2023, Serhii’s fellow soldier wrote to me, asking if I had seen the video. I could not immediately understand what he was talking about until he sent me that video. I could barely recognize Serhii in it. He had lost a lot of weight and was very pale. In the video, he was confessing to the crime,” says Tamara. The woman does not believe that his confession is true. She explains that Serhii could not have committed the crime, since he was in hospital.
Nevertheless, Serhii Mykhailenko was charged with shooting at a civilian car, as a result of which two men, a woman and a three-year-old child died. The occupation court sentenced the Azov Brigade member to life imprisonment in a maximum-security penal colony.
Now his wife Tamara is looking for ways to release her husband. She even managed to reach the Pope: in the summer of 2024, together with the families of illegally convicted prisoners of war, she had an audience with him and asked for help so that the Holy See could become a mediator in this matter.
Tamara and other wives of convicted prisoners of war having an audience with the Pope
A colony from which it is impossible to escape
Service persons develop serious health problems over the years of captivity in appalling conditions without adequate food and medical care. Systematic tortures are mentioned by those who were returned during the last exchange in September 2024. Tamara says that her husband’s health has also worsened:
“He suffers from heart problems and frequent chest pains. His hands go numb. He also had gastritis, but he is denied treatment in captivity, and he has liver problems. After being wounded, he can barely feel his legs.”
Serhii Mykhailenko was sent to Siberia to serve his sentence in Colony No. 18 “Polar Owl”. It is located in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug of Tyumen Oblast. It is considered to be one of the strictest prisons in the former Soviet Union. This colony was created to hold extremely dangerous criminals sentenced to life imprisonment. They say that it is impossible to escape from there. Several other convicted Ukrainian prisoners of war are kept at similar institutions (Black Dolphin, Polar Wolf).
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has recently published data on cases against Ukrainian service persons and civilians: “Since 2014, more than 5,300 cases have been initiated against representatives of the military and political leadership of the Kyiv regime, members of radical nationalist associations, and officers of law enforcement agencies. Preliminary investigations have been completed withing the framework of 355 criminal cases against 496 defendants. As a result of the consideration of criminal cases, guilty verdicts have been announced by the court against 412 people, with 32 sentenced to life imprisonment.”
Tamara, Serhii Mykhailenko’s wife
Human rights defenders emphasize that the court cases prosecuted by Russia against Ukrainian soldiers constitute a violation of the right to a fair trial, as specified in Article 6 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
