The fabricated prosecution of educational and lawyer Dr Oleg Maltsev reveals a couple of man’s ordeal: it exposes a judiciary unwilling to uphold rights towards the ability of the safety providers, undermining Ukraine’s path in direction of the EU.
Dr Maltsev, an educational and practising lawyer, has spent over 370 days in Odesa Pre-Trial Detention Centre (SIZO) on subversion expenses he denies. The defence maintains that the prison case is fully fabricated and that the tutorial is being prosecuted for the expression of his opinions.
Maltsev was arrested on September 12, 2024. For over a 12 months he has remained in SIZO with out bail regardless of the deterioration of his well being for which he doesn’t obtain applicable therapy, based on his lawyer, Yevheniia Tarasenko.
Returning from an Italian analysis expedition in December 2023, Maltsev already knew that prison proceedings had been initiated towards him in Ukraine. He knew the title of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer who had launched the case and was even conscious that nameless people had emailed his lawyer’s official handle providing to “settle” and shut the matter for cash. He may have chosen to not return to Ukraine and to keep away from the danger of an arrest. Instead, he determined to return house and to resolve the problem lawfully, as a result of he knew he had performed nothing mistaken, however this was not sufficient.
In May 2024, SBU officers initiated prison proceedings, which enabled the Ukrainian authorities to detain Maltsev on 12 September and to remand him to SIZO with out bail, the place he has remained for greater than 12 months.
The arrest was grounded in an professional examination of the very movies through which Dr Maltsev was conducting conferences with the workers of the the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (EUASU). In different phrases, the explanation for the Ukrainian scholar’s extended detention in SIZO is the interpretation by a analysis unit subordinate to the SBU of his phrases expressing his opinion and views on a safety situation.
Two articles of the prison code are imputed to him by the SBU:
- Article 109 – Conspiracy aimed on the violent overthrow of the constitutional order and the seizure of state energy;
- Article 260 – Creation of an illegal paramilitary formation.
Why such accusations? On which foundation?
Anticipating the Russian invasion and organizing self-defence
The defence maintains that the prison case is fully fabricated and that the tutorial is being prosecuted for the expression of his opinions.
While on a European analysis expedition, Maltsev convened an internet assembly at which he introduced to some EUASU workers a plan of motion in case Russian forces would enter Odesa. In specific, he questioned whether or not the safety providers would be capable of defend Odesa’s residents within the occasion of an occupation. The instance of what had occurred in Kherson firstly of the struggle was inspiring him.
Indeed, on 2 March 2022, no Ukrainian police or authorities forces had been then seen within the centre of Kherson, based on The Washington Post. Moreover, in a latest interview, former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko explicitly acknowledged that as early as 24 February 2022 there have been already no police, no army, and no Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) current within the metropolis. “Kherson was left with out those that ought to have defended it,” he stated. “By the night of 24 February, there have been no police, no military, and no SBU. Among those that actually stood as much as defend the town, I solely noticed patrol policemen.”
An analogous state of affairs seemed sensible for Odesa within the spring of 2022 and this most likely didn’t please some native authorities. After the pressing withdrawal of the authorities and safety forces, residents may have been left face-to-face with the occupiers; lootings and robberies had been additionally anticipated. A plan was due to this fact proposed whereby the EUASU workers would supply for their very own self-defence in addition to the safety of the inhabitants and the Academy’s materials and technical base.
The Ukrainian judicial system and the defence’s arguments
The defence selected a technique of rebutting the SBU’s professional report allegedly justifying their operation with out which the detention of Dr Maltsev, himself a practising lawyer, would have been unimaginable.
According to the investigation, the members of the allegedly unauthorized paramilitary group are: scientists (scientific colleagues of Dr. Maltsev from the Research Institute and members of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), housewives, journalists, legal professionals and translators. None of those individuals has ever served within the military and has any fight expertise. Most of them are girls.
Lawyer Alexander Babikov harassed that there isn’t any proof of the existence of any paramilitary formation, any army settlement, any program of army coaching, or any unlawful weapons. The investigation depends solely by itself controversial interpretation of a dialog of Dr Maltsev.
“Keeping Dr Oleg Maltsev in custody for over a 12 months with out bail is a punitive, not precautionary, measure. By disregarding impartial experience and overlooking indicators of prosecutorial corruption, judges danger aligning themselves with politically motivated prosecutions. Such choices forged an extended shadow over their careers — Strasbourg is not going to overlook.”
— Anna Sassu, Italian human rights professional, former Human Rights Watch workers member
On 27 February 2025, Maltsev’s defence obtained the outcomes of a complete forensic linguistic and semantic-textual examination of the video recording utilized by the prosecution to justify Maltsev’s detention.
In the professional and forensic opinion of the National Scientific Centre of Forensic Expertise named after Honoured Professor M. S. Bokarius, it was emphasised that Maltsev and his colleagues had been discussing the organisation of self-defence of the workplace premises in addition to of the EUASU tutorial and educating workers within the occasion of an armed incursion or an try by the armed forces of the Russian Federation to grab Odesa.
In an interview in regards to the Maltsev’s case, lawyer Babikov identified that “based on the investigation, these individuals had been imagined to seize a metropolis of many thousands and thousands – Odessa, which even after 3 years of struggle, Russian troops didn’t dare to do”.
The case of Dr Maltsev is now beneath scrutiny in Brussels and past
On 28 March 2025, on the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Christine Mirre delivered an oral assertion on the case of Oleg Maltsev, representing two European human rights organisations lively in Brussels and Geneva, particularly—Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP/Liberté de Conscience, France) and Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF, Belgium) created in 1988.
In her oral assertion, Christine Mirre alleged that Yevhen Volosheniuk, a counter-intelligence officer of the Security Service of Ukraine, gave the impression to be the organiser of the fabricated prison case towards Maltsev. Since the case reached the worldwide enviornment, the Ukrainian tutorial has remained in pre-trial detention and Maltsev has continued to loudly proclaim his innocence.
In August 2025, on the initiative of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a coalition of 45 students and consultants from 12 nations confirmed in writing their deep concern in regards to the unprecedented prison prosecution of Maltsev. The EUASU intends to companion with main worldwide human rights organisations to press for the fast and unconditional launch of the Ukrainian scholar.
The judiciary is sick in Ukraine, together with in Odesa, and have to be healed if the nation desires to be accepted within the European Union.
See as effectively: Ukraine, Suspicion of Fabrication of a Criminal Case
Dr Oleg Maltsev in his tiny cell (down on the precise)
