Sergei Kovalskii
- Criminal Code
- Article 205.4 part 2, Russian Criminal CodeArticle 361 part 1 applied with Article 30 part 3, Russian Criminal Code
- Case category
- Terrorism cases
- Verdict
- Imprisonment (strict regime)
- Sentence
- 14 years
- Date of verdict
- 2026-01-30
- Region
- Occupied territory of Republic of CrimeaOccupied territory of Khersonska oblast
- City
- Simferopol
- Address for letters
- 344022 г. Ростов-на-Дону, ул. Максима Горького, 219, ФКУ СИЗО-1 УФСИН России по Ростовской области, Ковальский Сергей Александрович, 1990 г.р.
Recognition by human rights organisations
- Recognised as a political prisonerby Memorial: Support for Political Prisoners, 30 January 2026
This is the assessment of the organisation named above, not ours. FACTUM reports it with attribution and does not make its own.
Case summary
Serviceman of the Ukrainian armed forces. Detained in Kherson on 21 July (according to other sources, 3 August) 2022, he was placed in the basement of the Ministry of Internal Affairs building. He later said that he was tortured with electric shocks and hung from bars. On 5 October 2022, he was forced to write a statement on participation in the operational experiment. The next day, Kovalskii was taken to Simferopol. According to Kovalskii, he was taken to the operational experiment together with another persecuted person, Konstantin Reznik, tied up in the boot. Reznik confirms that the experiment was conducted in early October. Kovalskii told the court that it was a staged video, as if he were trying to take an explosive device from the cache on the instructions of an SBU officer, after which he was detained. During the staged detention, he had his collarbone dislocated. At the same time, according to the case materials, Kovalskii was detained on 2 August 2022. He was officially accused of participation in the activities of the terrorist community and preparation to commit an act of international terrorism. As the investigation states, he was involved in the preparation of attacks on the employees of the civil-military administration. On 30 January 2026, Kovalskii was sentenced to 17 years in a strict regime colony.
Others charged under Article 205.4 part 2, Russian Criminal Code
What we write about political persecution
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Source: this person’s record in the OVD-Info political persecution database
Published under CC BY 3.0. The criteria for treating a person as politically persecuted belong to OVD-Info; FACTUM relays their assessment and makes none of its own.
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