The “State Treason” Case

Illustrative photo

Legal qualification:

• Article 3(f) of UNGA Resolution 3314: Providing territory for the commission of an act of aggression (context).

• Qualification of I.R.’s actions: Within Belarus — “Act of Terrorism” (Art. 289 CC RB), “State Treason” (Art. 356 CC RB).

• Qualification of authorities’ actions: Torture (Art. 7(1)(f) Rome Statute), persecution on political grounds (Art. 7(1)(h)).

I.R., 29, worked as a railway track fitter at the Belarusian Railway in a small town in Homyel Region. He was not an activist, but he had what is often called “an acute sense of justice.” He loved his country and considered himself a patriot.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, I.R.’s life was turned upside down. His station became a key logistics hub for Russian forces. “I saw it with my own eyes,” he later wrote in a letter to his family. “Trains with tanks, Grad launchers, barrels of fuel. They ran without stopping. On the platforms sat young Russian soldiers, laughing and waving at us. And I understood they were going to kill. And they were going there from my land, on my rails.”

For several weeks, I.R. fell into deep depression. He read news from Ukraine, saw images from Bucha, Irpin, and Chernihiv — towns just across the border from his home. He recognized the vehicles shown outside Kyiv — the same ones he had seen pass through his station.

In early March, he met with two friends, also railway workers. “We couldn’t just sit and watch,” he explained. “That was complicity. We decided we had to stop it.” Using their professional knowledge, they devised a plan. Their goal was not to blow up tracks, which could cause derailment and casualties, but to disable signaling equipment. They chose a relay cabinet responsible for signals and switches.

One night in mid-March, they carried out their plan. They broke into and burned the equipment inside the signalling cabinet. Traffic on that stretch was paralyzed for a day and a half. Analysts later calculated that this and similar acts significantly slowed Russian military logistics toward Kyiv.

They were identified quickly. The country was already under a counter-terrorist operation regime, and the KGB and GUBOPiK threw all resources into hunting “railway partisans.” A week later, at night, special forces stormed I.R.’s home. “It wasn’t an arrest,” he wrote. “It was a punitive raid.” Windows and doors were smashed; he was dragged outside in his underwear and beaten.

Then the torture began. As human rights defenders later learned, I.R. and his friends were tortured with exceptional cruelty in the KGB pre-trial detention facility. They were suspended in the “swallow” position, electrocuted, and forced to confess to working for Ukrainian and Polish intelligence. During one interrogation, under the pretext of simulating an “escape attempt,” their legs were shot. “Their knees were shot through. This is not a metaphor,” an attorney under a nondisclosure agreement later reported. “They were forced to crawl with their shot legs down a corridor while operatives filmed it.”

The trial was held in Homyel behind closed doors. Journalists and family members were not allowed in. The case was instantly reclassified from “property damage” to “Act of Terrorism committed by an organized group” and “State Treason.” The prosecution argued that, as a citizen of Belarus, I.R. had “aided a foreign state (Ukraine) in hostile activities” and “undermined the defense capability” of the Union State.

The prosecutor requested 22 years in prison. The state-appointed attorney pleaded for leniency.

The most powerful moment of the trial — known thanks to a leak — was I.R.’s “final statement.” He spoke calmly, standing on crutches. “Your Honor,” he said, “you are judging me for betraying my Homeland. But what is Homeland? It is the land where I was born. It is the people. And I could not allow death to be carried from my land to my neighbors. We were judged as terrorists. But we did not kill anyone, we did not endanger anyone. We simply stopped trains of death. I know that because of us several trains carrying missiles did not reach their targets. If that is the price so that at least one shell does not land in a Ukrainian home where children sleep — I am ready to pay it.”

The court sentenced I.R. to 20 years in a high-security prison. His friends received 18 and 19 years. They were declared “terrorists,” and state propaganda used the case as a demonstrative punishment of “traitors.” In a censored letter to his wife, I.R. wrote only one sentence: “I regret nothing. The truth is on our side.”

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