Russia’s military courts intensified prosecutions of captured Ukrainian soldiers, framing them under terrorism and extremism laws rather than as prisoners of war protected under international conventions. The case of fifteen members of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion, sentenced in Rostov-on-Don to between 15 and 21 years in maximum-security penal colonies, marked one of the most significant judicial actions since the full-scale invasion of 2022.
Russia’s Prosecutor General stated that the soldiers were found guilty of being part of a terrorist organization that has been allegedly active since the conflict in Donbas in 2014. The ruling attracted instant Kyiv and international espousalism, which opined that the trial was a direct breach of the Geneva Conventions. Such treaties do not allow the prosecution of the legitimate combatants on the basis of fighting in a military conflict.
Human rights scholars argue that the judicial framing by Russia has two purposes: to justify further detentions and support the propaganda story of the state. They say that the application of the terrorism term is more about political rhetoric than legal accuracy in which they define Ukrainian resistance as a criminal extremism rather than a right of self-defense.
Legal And Human Rights Perspectives On The Trials
According to international legal scholars, the prosecution of captured soldiers as having perpetrated terrorism is very much negative to the primacy of humanitarian law. According to the Third Geneva Convention, a prisoner of war cannot be criminally prosecuted due to acts of combat unless he/she commits acts of war crimes. The lack of evidence that the accused committed atrocities and/or civilian-target attacks in the Rostov cases, begs some basic questions on whether the area of law is justifiable.
In a 2025 review, the International Commission on Jurists based in Geneva noted that the approach of Russia is a twist on the international norms aimed at safeguarding people under the custody of wartime. It is reported that there was limited access to the defense and the hearings were not open to the public and it is also said that confessions were taken by force. Human rights observers believe that such trends are consistent with the past history in which Russia has used its courts to silence critics and misuse its courts as a tool to paint its enemies as terrorists.
Patterns Of Judicial Persecution
Between 2022 and 2025, independent observers have recorded over 120 cases of the Ukrainian POWs being tried in the Russian or occupation-controlled courts, with little chance of receiving a more lenient sentence of up to 12 years to life imprisonment. Legal scholars refer to them as performative prosecutions, which were designed to justify the Moscow version of the war.
One of the senior analysts at Memorial, a Russian human rights organization that is banned, observed that the judicial system is not being used to deliver justice, but rather, a message. That, according to critics, is urging people to fight against the invasion of Russia as equal to terrorism, which is meant to discourage Ukrainian fighters and to legitimize the actions of Russia on its own population.
International Monitoring And Responses
The United Nations, European Union, and International Committee of the Red Cross has heavily criticized the way Ukrainian POWs are treated by the Russians. By mid-2025, the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine stated that torture, sexual abuse, and summary executions were still prevalent, and described this as crimes against humanity.
The accountability mechanisms encompassed by the Western governments include the International Criminal Court (ICC). Though Moscow denies the ICC jurisdiction, these reports have been piling pressure on sanctions against judicial officials who are part of the prosecutions. Kyiv still pressures to increase prisoner swaps but little progress has been made amid growing frontline aggressions.
Russia’s Legal Defense And Narrative
Russia is adamant that the prosecutions are legal, asserting that the accused were involved in terrorist activities prior to 2022 and therefore they are not covered by POW protections. State-owned media describe the trials as retaliation in defense of Russian citizens in the occupied lands and treat groups like the Aidar Battalion as extremist groups.
This story also reflects the old Russian label of Ukrainian formations of volunteers as neo-Nazi militia, which was denied by the international community as a disinformation technique. However, in the internal legal and media system of Russia, this type of framing strengthens the legitimacy of the state position, and promotes the opinion of the people in favor of the war process.
Political And Strategic Implications Of The Trials
The trials of the terrorists have a number of strategic roles in the Kremlin. By designating captured Ukrainian troops as terrorists and not combatants, Russia will evade the binding international legal standards, allowing the detention to be indefinitely justified under its anti-terrorism statutes. Internal propaganda is also aided by this strategy since Russia is not depicted as an aggressor but a defender of extremism.
The trials also serve as psychological warfare. Moscow wants to demoralize Ukrainians by announcing protracted sentences, and it sends the message of the hopelessness of the opposition. At the same time, these trials solidify the authority of Russia over the territories it occupies, where Russian-established courts are utilized to legalize governance institutions and criminalize dissent.
But there is the cost of diplomacy in these tactics. The Western countries and international bodies have been stepping up on the isolation of Russia based on these prosecutions as more reasons why there is systematic neglect of humanitarian law. The outcome is increasing the gap between the laws and morality between Russia and the rest of the world, making the peace-making process difficult in the future.
Historical Context And Strategic Continuities
The 2025 prosecutions use the precedents of the previous interventions of Russia in Crimea and Donbas. Since 2014, the laws of terrorism and extremism have been applied by Moscow to Ukrainian volunteers and activists, frequently making them appear as a threat to the Russian-speaking population.
Such a legal procedure resembles the methods of the Soviet period, when political dissidents were tried in relation to the accusations of anti-state activity, which could not be defined precisely. The contemporary trials have been compared by the analysts with the Cold War practices which suppressed ideological opposition in the name of national security. The continuity highlights the fact that the legal system of Russia is still subject to the power of the state, and the development of the judicial system is based not on its independence but on the promotion of political aims.
The 2025 trials, thus, continue to be a legal, as well as a symbolic battlefield, the one in which the definitions of terrorism, resistance, and sovereignty clash with the international law in the context of the international law.
The Challenges Of Accountability And Justice
The greater complication is that the detained soldiers should be given justice, and the integrity of the humanitarian law should not be compromised. By October 2025 over 6,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russian custody will have few international observers. The attempts to record the abuses are still going on with the help of digital evidence gathering and testimonies of survivors organized by NGOs and legal professionals.
The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine and the associated groups are preparing lawsuits to be filed in case of international litigation, but the execution is not guaranteed due to the lack of cooperation of Russia with the international courts. They have made some gains over negotiated exchanges although most of the detainees have been kept imprisoned indefinitely without due process.
This detachment of responsibility will be the normalization of weaponizing law in the contemporary conflict. Analysts fear that unless these precedents are overruled in the future, they will weaken the safeguards which form the cornerstone of the entire system of international humanitarian law.
Observing Future Developments
With the war in Russia-Ukraine being in its fourth year, the Ukrainian POW trials represent but a bigger clash over the idea of justice during wartime. The courtroom which used to be the beacon of objective adjudication is now another battlefield in the information and psychological front to determine the course of the conflict.
Ongoing diplomatic efforts at the UN, OSCE, and ICC may yet redefine the boundaries of accountability, particularly if new mechanisms emerge to address wartime legal abuses. Still, the fate of hundreds of prisoners hangs in the balance, suspended between legal ambiguity and geopolitical rivalry.
The persistence of these trials raises a deeper question about the future of humanitarian norms. Can international law endure when its core principles are systematically reinterpreted for political ends? As Russia continues its judicial campaign and Ukraine presses for justice, the global response will determine whether these proceedings become a cautionary precedent or a turning point for defending the rule of law in times of war.
