‘Nina Tymoshenko will be most unlikely to survive this shockingly savage sentence.’
– Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
Nina Tymoshenko is a 68-year-old pensioner and native of Ukraine from Crimea. According to Memorial, the website If There Were No War and the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group [KHPG], Nina Tymoshenko was arrested by the FSB in September 2024 and remanded in custody on a charge of treason (Art. 275 CC RF). As KHPG notes, ‘Russia has made it impossible to live under occupation without taking Russian citizenship and then claims Ukrainians are ‘Russians’, and accuses them of “treason against Russia”.’
According to the Russian investigative authorities, in September 2022, Tymoshenko on her own initiative contacted the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine and offered assistance in gathering information. Between October and November 2023, she allegedly collected and transmitted through an internet messenger to a representative of the Ukrainian intelligence agencies information about military facilities, the number and deployment of personnel of the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation, as well as photo and video materials with data on the location of ships of the Black Sea Fleet. KHPG calls all these allegations ‘implausible’, noting: ‘The [alleged] information often seems like something the defendant would be unlikely to be in possession of and / or unlikely to be information the SBU actually needed and did not have.‘
On 21 March 2025 Nina Tymoshenko was convicted of treason in a closed-door trial and sentenced by Russian judge Igor Kozhevnikov, sitting in the occupation Sevastopol City Court, to sixteen years in a general regime penal colony for treason, together with a fine of 200,000 roubles and probation of one year following her release. On 13 May 2025, Judge Yelena Udod, sitting in the occupation Third Appellate Court of General Jurisdiction in Sochi, upheld the sentence. Tymoshenko is currently serving her sentence in Penal Colony No. 28 in Russia’s Volgograd region.
‘The information that Tymoshenko is claimed to have passed on is very similar to that named in the ‘trial’ of another pensioner, Halyna Dovhopola, who will shortly turn 71, having spent the last seven years in Russian captivity. Halyna was almost certainly targeted for her love of Ukraine, and it is more than likely that the same applies to Nina Tymoshenko. The latter will be turning 68 in a month and would be most unlikely to survive this shockingly savage sentence.’
– Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group
Source: Halya Coynash, ‘Brutal 16-year sentence against 67-year-old Crimean pensioner for being from Western Ukraine, KHPG, 5 March 2026
Nina Tymoshenko has been unlawfully prosecuted by the occupation authorities for her anti-war stance. Memorial has recognised her as a political prisoner.
Write to Nina Tymoshenko
The Russian penal system does not allow any messages to prisoners that are written in foreign languages, but Write to Russia is here to help you. To show your support for Nina Tymoshenko please send your letter as an email to us at: le******************@********il.com. We’ll translate your letter into Russian and, depending on your request, either mail the translated letters on your behalf to Nina Tymoshenko, or return the letters to you by email for posting in an envelope with addresses written in Russian. If we send the letter on your behalf, we ask that you compensate us for the cost of postage from the UK (currently £3.60 [$4.89; €4.17] for one letter). For suggestions on what to write to a political prisoner, click here. To learn more about our letter writing project, click here: Write to Russia.
You can write to Nina Tymoshenko at the following address:
Russian Federation – 404621, Волгоградская область, г. Ленинск, ул. Промышленная, д. 12, ФКУ ИК-28 УФСИН России по Волгоградской области, Тимошенко Нина Ивановна, 1958 г. р.
The persons unjustly imprisoned in Russia whose plight our project Write to Russia has highlighted to date can be found at this link:
Write to Russia – List of Prisoners
