On Wednesday, March 15, in the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don, the first hearing in a criminal case against a citizen of Ukraine, a veteran of the ATO, Pavlo Zaporozhets, was held. This is reported by lawyer Aleksei Ladin.
It is noted that the investigation of the FSB of Russia and the prosecutor’s office believes that Pavel committed an attempt on an international terrorist act.
In fact, Pavlo Zaporozhets, being an active serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the course of fulfilling a combat order, tried to place an explosive device on the route of the military patrol of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation in Kherson on the night of May 8-9, 2022, however, when trying to do this, about 3 o’clock in the morning, was detained.
Despite the prosecution’s assertion that civilians of the Russian Federation could have been injured in the explosion, Ladin recorded the following:
The explosion was supposed to occur at night, which, given the curfew period, eliminates the threat to civilians.
On September 9, 2022, de jure and de facto, the city of Kherson was the territory of the state of Ukraine, and therefore the presence of Russian citizens there is excluded by law.
The explosive device was supposed to be planted strictly in the path of the military patrol route.
There were no consequences from the actions of Zaporozhets.
“In this regard, the defense believes that the only legal solution in the case is the termination of the criminal prosecution of Zaporozhets and his detention in accordance with the provisions regulated by the III Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War (a document stating that Zaporozhets is a military man and Ukraine determined his status as a prisoner of war attached to materials of the criminal case)”,- he explained.