Russia handed mock sentences to 250 captured Azov soldiers
When international law is completely off the table, Moscow just turns its courtrooms into a conveyor belt for 20-year prison terms.
Out of roughly 700 Azov fighters still held in Russian captivity, about 250 have already been hit with bogus criminal convictions.
The playbook is relentlessly grim: extract confessions under torture for non-existent war crimes, or simply slap people with "terrorism" charges purely for serving in the unit. Handing down 17 to 20 years in a maximum-security prison in Rostov-on-Don just for having enlisted back in 2015 has become routine factory work for their judges.
The underlying catch is deliberate bureaucratic malice: once a prisoner of war is formally "sentenced" under Russian law, including them in any prisoner swap suddenly requires a personal pardon signed by Putin.
Turning blatant war crimes into a legalistic hostage scheme is quite the signature move.
Source: Ukrinform
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