In spring 2025, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) accepted the case of the Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk who was seized and arrested in April 2024 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU). He has since been held in a prison in Nikolaev on charges of “high treason under conditions of martial law” which carry between 15 years and life in prison.
The fight for his freedom is of the utmost importance for the struggle to defend democratic rights and oppose war everywhere. Therefore, we call on all our readers to sign this petition to demand
The case before the ECHR relies on the violation of Bogdan’s basic right to liberty. His defense attorneys argue that the charges are fraudulent and that he should have never been arrested. Bogdan, who was 25 and in poor health at the time of his arrest, constituted no danger to society, had no prior criminal record, and was arrested purely for the expression of his political beliefs.
There have been several other grave violations of the European Convention on Human Rights. His right to a fair trial has been violated at every step of the way. Bogdan has also been denied urgently necessary dental care for over a year. Despite timely payments from his defense and repeated promises from the prison, procedures have been delayed again and again. This is a clear violation of the prohibition of “inhumane treatment” of prisoners.
The decision by the ECHR to review Bogdan’s case is an important political and legal victory. A socialist since his early youth, Bogdan committed only one “crime”: he opposed the war in Ukraine and the governments of both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky by fighting for the unity of the Ukrainian and Russian working class.
Bogdan is one of tens of thousands of Ukrainian workers and youth who have been imprisoned on bogus charges of “state treason”. Despite the well-documented practice of the illegal seizure and imprisonment of citizens, unfair trials and inhumane and degrading treatment, the ECHR only accepts a tiny fraction of the many cases submitted from Ukraine. Its decision to review Bogdan’s case underscores the extent to which basic democratic issues are at stake.
Indeed, almost two years into his imprisonment, no objective observer can doubt that the charges against Bogdan are built on lies. The indictment is principally based on articles Bogdan wrote and translated for the World Socialist Web Site, the organ of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which is denounced as a “Russian propaganda and information agency”. In reality, these articles consistently advanced a principled, socialist opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This assessment has now been confirmed by one of Ukraine’s foremost criminologists, Yuri Borisovich Irkhin. In a 65-page linguistic expertise, commissioned by the defense, Borisov found that none of the over one dozen articles and statements cited by the prosecution “contain public calls aimed at undermining the national security of Ukraine, its national interests, the elimination of Ukrainian statehood and the destruction of Ukrainian identity”. Moreover, Irkhin concluded that “….there are NO statements, phrases, sentences, or word combinations that have signs of propaganda aimed at supporting the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.” (Emphasis in the original).
This expertise by an independent expert shatters the case of the prosecution. Bogdan should have never been arrested in the first place. He is innocent and must be freed immediately.
We hereby call for the broadest support for Bogdan Syrotiuk’s case before the ECHR:
This report, delivered to the Eighth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), introduced a resolution to Free Bogdan Syrotiuk. It explains the political foundations of the defense campaign and the political development of Bogdan Syrotiuk and the organization he founded, the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists..
On Thursday, June 13, this letter from the Socialist Equality Party and the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site was delivered to Oksana Markarova, the Ambassador of Ukraine, in Washington, D.C.
The fraudulent charge of treason brought against Syrotiuk is aimed at intimidating and suppressing growing opposition among Ukrainian workers and youth to the imperialist-backed Zelensky regime and the escalating war against Russia.
On Thursday, April 25, Bogdan Syrotiuk—a socialist opponent of the right-wing Zelensky regime and the NATO-instigated Ukraine-Russia war—was arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, in his hometown of Pervomaisk in southern Ukraine.
This speech was delivered by Bogdan Syrotiuk on behalf of the Young Guard of Bolshevik Leninists to the 2022 International Online May Day Rally on May 2, 2022, a few weeks after the Putin regime’s invasion of Ukraine and the beginning of the US-NATO war with Russia.
Based on original interviews, this article by Bogdan Syrotiuk, published under the pseudonym Stepan Geller, provides a unique and chilling account of the crimes of the Ukrainian fascists of Stepan Bandera against working people and youth of Ukraine.
These two speeches were delivered by Bogdan Syrotiuk and Andrei Ritsky, the leaders of the Young Guard of the Bolshevik Leninists in Ukraine and Russia, to the 2023 International Online May Day Rally.
This article documents the glorification of the Nazi collaborators of the Waffen SS Galicia division on Ukrainian television in the wake of the Canadian parliament’s standing ovation for the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Yaroslav Hunka.
On November 28, 2023, the long-standing American Trotskyist leader Helen Halyard passed away. In this statement, submitted on behalf of the YGBL, Bogdan Syrotiuk pays tribute to Halyard and outlines the significance of her struggle for the building of the Trotskyist movement in the former Soviet Union.
In this statement, Bogdan Syrotiuk draws a political balance sheet of the outcome of the 2014 Kiev coup that was backed by US and German imperialism and played a central role in preparing the ongoing NATO war against Russia in Ukraine.
The campaign to free Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk has reached a decisive turning point with the publication of a forensic linguistic analysis that shatters the fraudulent case against him.
The linguistic examination by Yuri Irkhin, one of Ukraine’s leading criminologist, marks not only a major setback for the prosecution. It is also a powerful vindication of the principled opposition by the Trotskyist movement to the war in Ukraine.
The decision to not dismiss the judge for bias underscores yet again that, within the Ukrainian court system, everything is stacked against Bogdan.
The Nikolaev appeals court based its argumentation on a distortion of a previous ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
junge Welt has come into the crosshairs of the Ukrainian censors because it reported on the government’s close collaboration with fascist forces, contradicted the NATO war narrative and informed readers about repression inside the country.
The World Socialist Web Site, the organ of the International Committee of the Fourth International, demands the immediate release of the prisoners.
Moss Robeson is a young, independent researcher in New York City who has run a prominent blog “Bandera Lobby,” about the history and contemporary political role of the movement associated with the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
The World Socialist Web Site recently conducted an interview with journalists from the Kharkov-based underground journalist collective assembly.org.ua who oppose the war in Ukraine and support the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk.
