Serhii Ofitserov is a 47-year-old resident of Kherson who was captured in his parents’ apartment on August 3 last year and is currently being held in Moscow’s Lefortovo SIZO on terrorism charges. On January 25, a court of Rostov-on-Don is scheduled to begin the trial in Serhii’s case, which involves eight other illegally detained Kherson residents.

‍By a cruel irony of fate, Serhii is a russian citizen by passport. He was born in Kherson, but his parents went to work to Kamchatka, where Serhii obtained his passport at the age of 16. A drastic change in his perception of himself as a Ukrainian happened after 2014: he hung the national flag on his balcony, listened to Ukrainian music, and switched to using only Ukrainian language in his social media. For three years in a row, Serhii tried to get rid of his passport with the double-headed eagle, but due to russian bureaucracy, he did not manage to do it until the full-scale invasion.

Serhii’s father does not know what exactly his son was doing after the occupation of Kherson began, but he assumes that he was helping the Ukrainian military. The exact reasons for the man’s detention are unknown, but one can assume that this might be the reason for the persecution.

On August 3, three FSB officers broke into Hennadii’s apartment and detained Serhii, who was visiting his father at the time. When Hennadii asked where he could find his son, he was told that the latter would come himself.

But since then, the family has never met. Later, his parents learned that before his detention, Serhii’s home had been searched. The relatives tried to get information from the occupation military-civilian administration, but they were told that there was no information about him. Later, a man who was held together with Serhii in one of the Kherson torture cells told his parents about their son. According to him, Serhii screamed the loudest under torture.

At the end of October 2022, Hennadii got a call from a lawyer who informed him that Serhii was in Lefortovo and was charged under three articles: Art. 30 – attempted crime, Art. 361 – act of international terrorism, and Art. 205.5 – organization of a terrorist organization. Over this time, Serhii has already lost 25 kilograms. His father is afraid that the Russian Federation might take particularly brutal revenge on his own citizen.

Eight other residents of Kherson are being accused under the same three articles together with Ofitserov: Oleg Bohdanov, Serhii Heidt, Serhii Kabakov, Yurii Kaiov, Serhii Kovalskyi, Denys Lialka, Kostiantyn Reznik and Yurii Tavozhnianskyi. If the Russian Federation finds them guilty, they will face 10 to 20 years in prison or a life sentence.