Illegal Crimean “judge” Oleksiy Nanarov sentenced in absentia for the deportation of a human rights defender

Date: 25 March 2025
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The Desnianskyi District Court of Kyiv has found Oleksiy Nanarov (Aleksey Nanarov), a so-called judge from occupied Crimea, guilty in absentia of violating the laws and customs of war, specifically for issuing a verdict on the forced deportation of human rights advocate Kostyantyn Sizarev, as reported by ZMINA, citing the court’s verdict.

Building of the illegitimate “Yevpatoriia City Court” in the occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea
Oleksiy Nanarov is a former judge of the Yevpatoriia City Court of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. He was appointed to this position by a decree of the President of Ukraine for a five-year term in October 2013.

In the spring of 2014, with the beginning of the temporary occupation of the peninsula by Russia, he violated his oath and joined the illegally created “court” by Russia.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, in this position, Nanarov issued illegal decisions under which Ukrainians were deported from Crimea. He justified the decisions by stating that they did not have permits and, therefore, did not comply with the “rules of stay on the territory of the Russian Federation.” However, according to Ukrainian law, no permits from the occupying administration are required for Ukrainian citizens to reside on Ukrainian territory.

Read also: Russia’s forced demographic changes in Crimea violate international law – Amnesty International   

In December 2016, Nanarov found human rights defender Kostyantyn Sizarev guilty of allegedly violating the terms of stay in the Russian Federation and evading departure from occupied Crimea. He was fined 2,000 rubles and forced to leave the peninsula on his own. Sizarev’s illegal sentence could not be appealed.   

In 2017, the Russians forcibly removed the man and handed him over to the Ukrainian side. The occupiers placed a deportation stamp in his passport.   

Sizarev was born and lived his entire life in Yevpatoriia with his family. He worked as an assistant judge at the Yevpatoriia City Court and was a co-founder of the human rights organization Justis.

This organization cared for vulnerable populations, provided them with legal assistance, and also conducted anti-corruption activities. After the occupation of Crimea by Russia, the man fought against the illegal activities of local security forces.   

In the fall of 2016, Russian occupying “police” searched Sizarev’s office and took him for questioning. Later, the press service of the occupation prosecutor’s office of Yevpatoriia stated that Justis’s activities were illegal and that the human rights defender should be deported from the Crimean Peninsula.

Additionally, this is not the first sentence against the so-called judge Nanarov. In September 2023, he was sentenced in absentia to 12 years with confiscation of property for high treason.

Previously, Mykyta Petrovets, a lawyer at the Regional Center for Human Rights, provided a detailed account of how Russia is altering the demographics of the Crimean Peninsula. He denounced this policy of the occupying state as colonialist.

Due to their distrust in the statistics published by the Russian Federation, Crimean human rights defenders at the Regional Center for Human Rights are challenging them in order to ascertain the full scale of this war crime. However, they estimate that Russia has illegally relocated between 500,000 to 800,000 of its own citizens to this Ukrainian territory, according to various estimates.

Petrovets’ is sure that Russia has begun to implement its entire “arsenal of colonial policy” in the newly occupied territories, honed over years of Crimea’s temporary occupation.

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