Illegitimate “court” in temporarily occupied Crimea punishes woman for calling for protests over power and water outages
In Russian-occupied Krasnoperekopsk in temporarily occupied Crimea, a Russian-controlled “court” sentenced a local woman to 20 hours of compulsory community service for calling on people to join a protest triggered by days-long power and water outages, Krym.Realii, a project of Radio Liberty, reported.
Entrance to the city of Krasnoperekopsk. Photo credit: Andrii IvchenkoAccording to the news outlet, following large-scale strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, residents of northern occupied Crimea were left without electricity for several days. By 8 July 2026, Krasnoperekopsk had been without electricity for more than 80 hours.
On social media, local residents complained about the lack of electricity and water, saying they were unable to live or work normally. They wrote that businesses had come to a standstill, workers were not being paid, and families were forced to care for children and carry water up to flats in multi-storey buildings without electricity.
Several days after these posts appeared, Russian security forces detained a 29-year-old woman from Krasnoperekopsk. According to the occupation authorities, she had published social media posts calling on local residents to take part in a rally and protest. The Russian-controlled “Centre for Combating Extremism” also claimed that the woman had been aware of local business owners’ plans to record a video appeal to Serhii Aksyonov, the Russian-installed “head” of occupied Crimea, regarding the ongoing power outages.
The occupation court found her guilty under Part 2 of Article 20.2 of Russia’s Code of Administrative Offences (“violating the established procedure for organising or holding a public event”) and sentenced her to 20 hours of compulsory community service.
Meanwhile, Oleh Burlaka, the occupation “head” of Krasnoperekopsk, said that residents who had been left without electricity for more than two days would receive a one-off payment of 15,000 Russian roubles.
Despite this, local residents continue to report severe power disruptions, saying that northern occupied Crimea has effectively been left without a proper restoration of the power grid.
Previously, ZMINA reported in Ukrainian that Illia Pavlenko, a major general and former deputy head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate from 2015 to 2020, said during the Fifth Crimea Platform Expert Network Forum that a new phase of operational isolation of the Russian military machine’s capabilities has begun in temporarily occupied Crimea to prevent the continued use of the peninsula as a base for military operations.
He emphasised that Ukraine’s goal is not to isolate its citizens in temporarily occupied Crimea, but to isolate the Russian military machine from its ability to transfer resources to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and use the peninsula to conduct further military operations.
ZMINA continues to monitor cases of persecution over online speech and comments. Our previous coverage includes cases in which:
- the Russian Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man sentenced over comments supporting Ukraine;
- Russian authorities sentenced a Sevastopol resident to five and a half years’ imprisonment over comments about the illegally constructed by Russian occupiers the Kerch Bridge;
- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) also detained a man in temporarily occupied Sevastopol over online comments about the Balaklava Thermal Power Plant;
- Russian authorities detained a man in occupied Berdiansk over online comments;
- a woman from the Kherson Oblast was sentenced to a prison term in Russia over online comments;
- a Ukrainian woman from currently occupied Melitopol was added to Russia’s list of “terrorists” over comments on social media.
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