The fabricated prosecution of academic and lawyer Dr Oleg Maltsev reveals more than one man’s ordeal: it exposes a judiciary unwilling to uphold rights against the power of the security services, undermining Ukraine’s path towards the EU.
Dr Maltsev, an academic and practising lawyer, has spent over 370 days in Odesa Pre-Trial Detention Centre (SIZO) on subversion charges he denies. The defence maintains that the criminal case is entirely fabricated and that the academic is being prosecuted for the expression of his opinions.
Maltsev was arrested on September 12, 2024. For over a year he has remained in SIZO without bail despite the deterioration of his health for which he does not receive appropriate treatment, according to his lawyer, Yevheniia Tarasenko.
Returning from an Italian research expedition in December 2023, Maltsev already knew that criminal proceedings had been initiated against him in Ukraine. He knew the name of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer who had launched the case and was even aware that anonymous individuals had emailed his lawyer’s official address offering to “settle” and close the matter for money. He could have chosen not to return to Ukraine and to avoid the risk of an arrest. Instead, he decided to go back home and to resolve the issue lawfully, because he knew he had done nothing wrong, but this was not enough.
In May 2024, SBU officers initiated criminal proceedings, which enabled the Ukrainian authorities to detain Maltsev on 12 September and to remand him to SIZO without bail, where he has remained for more than 12 months.
The arrest was grounded in an expert examination of the very videos in which Dr Maltsev was conducting meetings with the staff of the the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (EUASU). In other words, the reason for the Ukrainian scholar’s prolonged detention in SIZO is the interpretation by a research unit subordinate to the SBU of his words expressing his opinion and views on a security issue.
Two articles of the criminal code are imputed to him by the SBU:
- Article 109 – Conspiracy aimed at the violent overthrow of the constitutional order and the seizure of state power;
- Article 260 – Creation of an unlawful paramilitary formation.
Why such accusations? On which basis?
Anticipating the Russian invasion and organizing self-defence
The defence maintains that the criminal case is entirely fabricated and that the academic is being prosecuted for the expression of his opinions.
While on a European research expedition, Maltsev convened an online meeting at which he presented to some EUASU staff a plan of action in case Russian forces would enter Odesa. In particular, he questioned whether the security services would be able to protect Odesa’s residents in the event of an occupation. The example of what had happened in Kherson at the beginning of the war was inspiring him.
Indeed, on 2 March 2022, no Ukrainian police or government forces were then visible in the centre of Kherson, according to The Washington Post. Moreover, in a recent interview, former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolayenko explicitly stated that as early as 24 February 2022 there were already no police, no military, and no Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) present in the city. “Kherson was left without those who should have defended it,” he said. “By the evening of 24 February, there were no police, no army, and no SBU. Among those who truly stood up to defend the city, I only saw patrol policemen.”
A similar scenario looked realistic for Odesa in the spring of 2022 and this probably did not please some local authorities. After the urgent withdrawal of the authorities and security forces, residents could have been left face-to-face with the occupiers; lootings and robberies were also anticipated. A plan was therefore proposed whereby the EUASU staff would provide for their own self-defence as well as the protection of the population and the Academy’s material and technical base.
The Ukrainian judicial system and the defence’s arguments
The defence chose a strategy of rebutting the SBU’s expert report allegedly justifying their operation without which the detention of Dr Maltsev, himself a practising lawyer, would have been impossible.
According to the investigation, the members of the allegedly unauthorized paramilitary organization are: scientists (scientific colleagues of Dr. Maltsev from the Research Institute and members of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), housewives, journalists, lawyers and translators. None of these people has ever served in the army and has any combat experience. Most of them are women.
Lawyer Alexander Babikov stressed that there is no evidence of the existence of any paramilitary formation, any military settlement, any program of military training, or any illegal weapons. The investigation relies only on its own controversial interpretation of a conversation of Dr Maltsev.
“Keeping Dr Oleg Maltsev in custody for over a year without bail is a punitive, not precautionary, measure. By disregarding independent expertise and overlooking signs of prosecutorial corruption, judges risk aligning themselves with politically motivated prosecutions. Such decisions cast a long shadow over their careers — Strasbourg will not forget.”
— Anna Sassu, Italian human rights expert, former Human Rights Watch staff member
On 27 February 2025, Maltsev’s defence received the results of a comprehensive forensic linguistic and semantic-textual examination of the video recording used by the prosecution to justify Maltsev’s detention.
In the expert and forensic opinion of the National Scientific Centre of Forensic Expertise named after Honoured Professor M. S. Bokarius, it was emphasised that Maltsev and his colleagues were discussing the organisation of self-defence of the office premises as well as of the EUASU academic and teaching staff in the event of an armed incursion or an attempt by the armed forces of the Russian Federation to seize Odesa.
In an interview about the Maltsev’s case, lawyer Babikov pointed out that “according to the investigation, these people were supposed to seize a city of many millions – Odessa, which even after 3 years of war, Russian troops did not dare to do”.
The case of Dr Maltsev is now under scrutiny in Brussels and beyond
On 28 March 2025, at the 58th session of the UN Human Rights Council, Christine Mirre delivered an oral statement on the case of Oleg Maltsev, representing two European human rights organisations active in Brussels and Geneva, in particular—Coordination des Associations et des Particuliers pour la Liberté de Conscience (CAP/Liberté de Conscience, France) and Human Rights Without Frontiers (HRWF, Belgium) created in 1988.
In her oral statement, Christine Mirre alleged that Yevhen Volosheniuk, a counter-intelligence officer of the Security Service of Ukraine, appeared to be the organiser of the fabricated criminal case against Maltsev. Since the case reached the international arena, the Ukrainian academic has remained in pre-trial detention and Maltsev has continued to loudly proclaim his innocence.
In August 2025, at the initiative of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, a coalition of 45 scholars and experts from 12 countries confirmed in writing their deep concern about the unprecedented criminal prosecution of Maltsev. The EUASU intends to partner with leading international human rights organisations to press for the immediate and unconditional release of the Ukrainian scholar.
The judiciary is sick in Ukraine, including in Odesa, and must be healed if the country wants to be accepted in the European Union.
See as well: Ukraine, Suspicion of Fabrication of a Criminal Case
Dr Oleg Maltsev in his tiny cell (down on the right)
