Appeals court upholds 15-year prison sentence for woman from Nizhyn on treason charges

Court instance confirmed severe punishment

The Chernihiv Court of Appeal ruled to leave unchanged the verdict issued by the court of first instance to 30-year-old Anna Pohribna, a resident of Nizhyn. The woman was found guilty of committing treason and sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.

Path to cooperation with enemy agents

According to the defendant, financial difficulties prompted her to commit the crime. Funds were needed for the treatment of her boyfriend, a former serviceman. The man survived three concussions and suffers from a severe form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Until April 2025, Anna worked as a consultant in a call centre, but later saw an advertisement in a Telegram channel for part-time work: “Earnings from 400 to 1000 hryvnia” per hour of promoter work. The contact was a person named Valeriya.

After contacting Valeriya, Anna was offered to paste flyers with the same text about earnings and a Telegram contact. After completing this first task and receiving payment, some time passed. Then Valeriya reached out from another channel.

Tasks involving intelligence gathering

When Anna asked about the nature of the new work, she was answered with one word: “Antenna”. Despite the ambiguity, the woman was sent coordinates. She arrived at the location but did not find an antenna, so she photographed the empty area to confirm the absence of the object. She was paid 500 hryvnia for the first task, and 2,700 hryvnia for subsequent ones. Later, the tasks became more complex.

The next step was establishing surveillance of railway infrastructure. Anna purchased a smartphone, connected a power bank to it, and installed applications that allow remote control of the device. The phone was left in the specified location so that an operator could continuously monitor the facility in real time. Anna hoped that someone would take the device, as she did not fully understand the purpose of Valeriya's actions. However, as soon as she left, Valeriya wrote: “Nothing is working. Did you turn it off or what? Come back”.

At that moment, Anna realised that she had fallen into a serious trap. She returned, took the mobile phone, and decided to stop cooperating with the stranger. However, this did not prevent her detention.

Defence arguments and court position

In court, Anna Pohribna emphasised that she did not realise she was communicating with a representative of the aggressor country, as the correspondence was conducted in the Ukrainian language. She claimed that if she had known it was necessary to photograph military facilities, she would never have agreed to such work. The defence explained that Anna did indeed ask Valeriya about the possibility of being exposed by SBU officers, but believed that photographing agricultural plots and train movements might be needed for the purposes of “Ukrzaliznytsia”.