"Vatniks don't surrender!" How Kyiv is trying the leaders of the Ukrainian Komsomol, the Kononovich brothers, whose support is being protested by communists all over the world

A detailed article about the Konovitch brothers' case, often cited abroad as the proof of political prosecution of leftists by the Ukrainian state. The situation is slightly different: the Konovitch brothers have over the years expressed consistent support for the Russian and Belarusian regimes. Nevertheless, they are currently prosecuted in Ukraine on dubious grounds, which indeed allows to qualify their case as political [D.S.]

Since 2022, the twin brothers from Lutsk, Mykhailo and Oleksandr Kononovich, leaders of the “Lenin Communist Youth Union of Ukraine,” have been on trial in Kyiv. Before the full-scale invasion, they had for years called for a fight against the “fascist regime” that emerged after the “coup” in 2014 and advocated for closer ties with Russia and Belarus. In March 2022, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) charged them with “inciting the violent seizure of power” and “conspiracy to commit such acts.” Investigators believe that the brothers called for illegal actions on Facebook, and at the end of February 2022, planned to seize the building of the Dnipro District Administration in Kyiv and “negotiate cooperation with Russian military personnel.”

The brothers deny all charges. According to them, the case against them is fabricated: their Facebook posts contain no calls for violent change of power, and the attempted seizure of the Dnipro Administration is an SBU fabrication. The Kononoviches claim that they were brutally tortured after their arrest. For almost three years now, communist parties in dozens of countries have been organising actions in support of the brothers.

Last September, the Kononoviches had their judge changed for the second time, and their case is to be heard from the beginning for the third time. “Grati” tells the story of the communist brothers.

“They risked their lives for the resistance of the Donbas peoples”

On 5 June 2022, in Rome, about ten young people gathered near the Colosseum and unfurled a banner saying “Freedom for the Kononovich Brothers and all political prisoners in Ukraine.” These were activists from “Rete dei Comunisti” — a small Italian youth communist organisation.

“We want to send a message of solidarity and struggle to the Kononovich brothers, two young communists and anti-fascists who were kidnapped and tortured by Ukrainian special services in March, and today there is no news about them. They risked their lives for the resistance of the peoples of Donbas and anti-fascists against the military aggression of Kyiv and the anti-people policy of the putschists towards all Ukrainian workers,” the statement on the Italian communists’ website said.

Mykhailo and Oleksandr Kononovich, about whom they wrote, are twin brothers from Lutsk. They are now 44 years old. In ’97, when they were 17, they joined the Communist Party of Ukraine. Later, they graduated together from the Lviv Academy of Land Forces, served for 10 years in the Armed Forces, resigned and returned to work in the Communist Party.

When Euromaidan began, they were the leaders of the Komsomol in Volyn. At that time, the brothers criticised the protests for signing the association with the EU and, in contrast, organised a motor rally in Lutsk with the flags of Russia and Belarus as a “sign of unity of the Slavic peoples.”

At the end of February 2014, the Lutsk “Right Sector” destroyed the local office of the Communist Party. And a few days later, Euromaidan won. The Communist Party, which had previously been in a coalition with the “Party of Regions,” lost power and influence. The new government took a course of condemning the Soviet regime and immediately announced plans to ban the Communist Party. However, the Kononoviches remained loyal to the Communist Party, were promoted, moved to Kyiv and launched vigorous activities. In 2014, Mykhailo became the head of the central committee of the Komsomol, and Oleksandr became the head of the ideology department. In numerous public statements, the Kononoviches said that the “revolution of disgust” had won in the country, a coup had taken place and a “Nazi and Banderite regime” had been established.

The brothers called the war in Donbas, which began later, a civil war “unleashed by the West and the oligarchs.” In November 2014, the Kononoviches collected and delivered humanitarian aid to Luhansk, which was then already under the control of pro-Russian separatists.

“Frightening the whole world with the unrecognised ’DPR’ and ’LPR,’ the Ukrainian junta forgets that it has long turned into a half-recognised ’Kosovo,’ where they live according to the principles of terrorist world formations, but recognised by the West,” Mykhailo wrote.

The Kononoviches repeatedly made similar statements, including on talk shows on Russian federal channels NTV and “Russia.”

The brothers’ activities did not go unnoticed by the authorities. In 2015, the SBU opened criminal proceedings against the Kononoviches under the article “separatism,” conducted searches, but no suspicions were reached.

The Kononoviches also often suffered at the hands of nationalists. In 2015, right-wing extremists seized Oleksandr and forcibly took him to the SBU office. In 2016, unknown masked men beat up Mykhailo in Chernihiv oblast, where he was running for parliament, and in 2018, in Kyiv, both brothers were thrown to the ground and beaten by members of the “National Corps.” In addition, the Faculty of Philosophy of the Eastern European University in 2014 expelled the Kononoviches from postgraduate studies for “violating moral norms of behaviour.” However, later both were reinstated through the court.

One of the Kononoviches’ activities is related to Belarus. They were born there and position themselves as members of the Belarusian community. Mykhailo is the head of the organisation “Syabry Volyni” (Friends of Volyn in Belarusian). In 2021, during the mass protests of Belarusians against the falsification of elections, the brothers actively supported Alexander Lukashenko, criticised the opposition and picketed the US Embassy in Kyiv, which, according to the Kononoviches, wanted to “plunge their historical homeland into civil confrontation.”

On the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion, the brothers assured that the future attack by Russia was a fiction, and that “Zelensky’s regime” and the West were to blame for the crisis situation around Ukraine.

“Information has passed through all the media that Americans and other Western embassies are evacuating their employees and citizens,” Mykhailo said in a video address on 17 February 2022. “As a citizen of Ukraine, I wish you would get the fck out of my country! If you leave, there will be peace and tranquility here. Only the embassies of friends should remain: Cuba, Russia, Belarus, China, all normal countries. And all the advisers and so-called masters, get the fck out!”

“For two days they simply beat us to a pulp”

Contrary to the Kononoviches’ predictions, eight days later, Russian troops launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began advancing on Kyiv. And two weeks later, on 6 March 2022, the Security Service announced the detention of the brothers. The intelligence service said that the investigation had obtained data “about their close cooperation with the special services of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus.”

“The goal of the occupiers’ minions is to shake the internal situation in the country and create the ’necessary information picture’ for Russia and Belarus. Currently, their picture is a view from behind the bars of a Ukrainian detention centre,” the SBU’s official statement said.

The Kononoviches themselves say that they were detained on 2 March in their apartment in Kyiv. The brothers complain that security service officers behaved unlawfully and brutally.

“At first we didn’t know who it was. We heard a knock on the door, they say: ’Open up, or we’ll shoot through the door.’ I approached the wall sideways, got on my knees, opened the door and immediately lay down. They ran in and started shooting at the corners. They were shooting in a high-rise building, such a show they put on, you could go crazy! They put a gun in my mouth and started interrogating me. The senior officer, who was the only one without a balaclava, said: ’How can he answer you? He has a gun in his mouth,’” Mykhailo told “Grati.”

According to him, SBU officers beat them, blindfolded them, led them out barefoot and without coats, and put them on a bus.

“The senior officer said: they won’t need coats anymore,” Mykhailo said.

“They took us to the Dnipro, and said: now we’ll throw you in the water,” added Oleksandr. “Then they talked among themselves, and, as I understood later, they took us to a basement on Askoldov Lane [a detention centre in the SBU building in the Pechersk district of Kyiv].”

The brothers were placed in separate cells. According to them, for the first two days, SBU officers constantly beat them to find out about their connections with Russian and Belarusian special services.

“Every two or three hours they would turn on the light, run in and beat the living daylights out of us. For two days they said nothing and just pounded us to a pulp. After a few days, I saw Sasha, my twin brother, I didn’t recognise him,” says Mykhailo.

As the brothers say, after two days the beatings stopped and they were called for interrogation. According to them, during the conversation, SBU officers persistently offered to sign a confession of working for Russia. The Kononoviches refused. The brothers insist that they have nothing to confess, and that they have always been engaged in politics for the sake of an idea, not on behalf of the Russians.

“They realised that we didn’t work for the KGB and the FSB. There, any person would have taken upon himself both the death of Princess Diana and anything else. And then they started covering their asses and said: slander your comrades, say that you took one and a half million to seize something there,” claims Oleksandr.

“They said: ’If you take this upon yourselves, we guarantee you life, you’ll first go to prison, and then we’ll throw you into an exchange.’ By the way, we refused the exchange,” added Mykhailo.

On 5 March, an investigator served them with a notification of suspicion of inciting the seizure of state power [part 2 of Article 109 of the Criminal Code] and conspiracy to commit these acts [part 1 of Article 109 of the Criminal Code]. On the same day, they were officially arrested for a month. Usually, a court makes the decision to detain, but the Kononoviches were arrested by a prosecutor. He referred to a provision of the Criminal Procedure Code, which allows this if courts cannot operate due to hostilities.

A month later, the prosecutor again extended their arrest, and in May they were already taken to court. According to the brothers, that was when they first got a lawyer.

Mykhailo and Oleksandr Kononovich at the Solomyansky Court of Kyiv (from left to right), 26 November 2024. Photo: Oleksiy Arunyan, Grati

Later, the defence lawyer filed a complaint with the State Bureau of Investigation from his clients about violations during the detention and torture in the detention centre. In the statement, the Kononoviches also claimed that intelligence agents stole their gold watch and withdrew money from their bank cards: 74,000 hryvnias from Mykhailo and 150,000 from Oleksandr. According to the Kononoviches, the SBI refused to open criminal proceedings on their complaint. “Grati” sent a request to the bureau regarding the Kononoviches’ statement, but the SBI refused to answer questions, citing the secrecy of the pre-trial investigation.

In response to “Grati’s” request, the SBU denied that it had violated the Kononoviches’ rights.

“This is confirmed by the detention protocols signed by the suspects themselves, as well as their handwritten documents stating that they have no statements, comments or additions regarding the procedural action,” says the response to the request, signed by the head of media relations, Andrii Dekhtiarenko.

According to the security service, the brothers were detained not on 2 March, as they themselves say, but on the 5th. The response states that the Kononoviches were not held in the detention centre on Askoldov Lane, but were immediately taken to the Lukyanivska pre-trial detention centre.

“They don’t understand what the communist international is”

Soon after the Kononoviches’ detention, a campaign for their release began around the world. The Ukrainian Komsomol, headed by Mykhailo, is part of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY). This is an international organisation, created back in 1945, which unites the youth branches of communist parties. For the most part, these communist parties are old small organisations that gradually lost influence after the collapse of the USSR and now have almost no support in their countries.

As in the Cold War, they consider their main enemy to be “Western imperialism” and NATO. In their agitation, these parties, like the Kononoviches, claim that in 2014, with the support of the West, a “fascist regime” was established in Ukraine. And the full-scale war in Ukraine, according to their version, also began due to the fault of the West and NATO, which “pursued an aggressive policy against Russia” and provoked the invasion. Some communist parties, for example, the German or Spanish ones, also condemn Russia, but still consider the West to be the main culprit.

World communist parties and the “Federation of Democratic Youth” also perceived the arrest of the Kononoviches as proof of their rightness and that Ukraine should not be supported because it persecutes dissent.

“Responsibility for the physical integrity of the Kononoviches lies not only with the reactionary Ukrainian regime, but also with the imperialist forces, such as the USA, the EU and NATO, which support it,” the federation stated and called on “anti-imperialist youth to support Ukrainian comrades”

Communist organisations began picketing Ukrainian embassies around the world and organising other actions. For example, in August 2022, in Glasgow, the organisation “Young Communist League” unfurled a banner at a Rangers football club match saying “Ukrainian Government, Free the Kononovich Brothers Now.” And in July 2022, in Madrid, hundreds of WFDY members went to a demonstration and chanted “Kononovych Liberta!” (Freedom to the Kononoviches!).

Actions were also held in Germany, Italy, Ireland, the USA, Sweden, Pakistan, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Austria, Greece, Paraguay, Australia and other countries.

“[After the rallies] they transferred us to a special unit so that we would have no communication at all. They are idiots, they thought that we were taking phones from inmates [and saying:] ’Hello, hold a rally in Argentina and Seoul.’ How much of an idiot [do you have to be?!] They plant snitches on us who say: ’Where do you get the money for rallies all over the world?’ They don’t even understand what the communist international is. What primitives!” Mykhailo told “Grati.”

In October 2022, the Solomyansky Court of Kyiv released the Kononoviches under house arrest. Six months later, the judge again eased the preventive measure: he forbade the brothers to leave the house only at night and ordered them to wear an electronic bracelet.

After their release, the Kononoviches curtailed their political activities: they no longer maintain pages on social networks and only occasionally record video messages to foreign comrades. In a conversation with “Grati,” they said that the Russian invasion of 2022 came as a big surprise to them. However, when asked about their attitude to Russia’s actions, the brothers did not give a direct answer and only said: “How can normal people feel about war?” And they added that, in their opinion, both Russia and Ukraine are to blame for starting the war, since the latter wanted to join NATO.

At the same time, the brothers claim that they support Ukraine within the borders of 1991. But, in their opinion, for now, in order to establish peace and preserve statehood, it is necessary to make compromises and territorial concessions, in order to later reunite with the lost territories.

“How can communists, who created the borders of 1991, be against the borders of ’91? Why, under the communists, was Ukraine from Kharkiv to Uzhhorod, from Sumy to Simferopol, and now it’s not? And how can we be separatists if we created this?! And you screwed it up!” said Mykhailo.

“They’re writing a fairy tale for which I’m facing 10 years of prison”

The Solomyansky Court of Kyiv began to consider the Kononoviches’ case on its merits in the summer of 2022. The prosecutor’s office announced an indictment with two episodes. In the first, the prosecution accused the brothers of publishing 13 posts on Facebook, which, according to an expert examination, call for the “violent seizure of state power.”

In particular, experts found violations in the following phrases (we indicate them in the original language, preserving the punctuation as the phrases are indicated in the indictment):

“The Council adopted a law on the exclusivity of the Ukrainian language! My tongue is my enemy! 20 million Russian speakers, strangers in their own country!” (25.04.2019)

“Everything is historically fair: no COMMUNISTS, no Ukraine from Lviv to Donetsk” (18.07.2020)

“Ukrainians, especially those who vote for Poroshenko, Zelensky, Tymoshenko, Avakov, Tyahnybok, Klitschko, Vakarchuk, Turchynov... What makes you think that bourgeois Nazi Ukraine will exist within the borders of the Ukrainian SSR and with a population of 52 million?” (21.09.2020)

“18 January 1654 Pereyaslav Council! Ukraine is Russia” (18.01.2021)

“Invaders from the territory of Ukraine have always been driven out from the east! And the occupation of our country has always occurred from the west, Ukrainians themselves cannot cope, however, as always in history” (07.02.2021)

“Ukraine needs a strong state power, such as the Communist Party or, as a last resort, a ’tsar father’ like Batska [Lukashenko]! Or 100% death!” (20.01.2021)

“There is no sadder story in the world than the story of Ukrainian sovereignty” (18.04.2021)

“Vatniks do not surrender” (20.04.2021)

All these posts were published on Mykhailo Kononovich’s page, but the indictment claims that the brothers “discussed, coordinated and published” them together. Currently, Mykhailo’s Facebook account has been deleted.

According to the second episode in the case, after the Russian full-scale invasion, the Kononovich brothers “developed a plan according to which they were to organise a certain number of people known to them, with whom they would forcibly seize the Dnipro District Administration in Kyiv, change its leadership to persons who would re-elect the state power and negotiate cooperation with military representatives of the Russian Federation.” According to the investigation, on 27 February 2022, the Kononoviches organised a meeting near the Dnipro Administration “with approximately 30 persons not established by the pre-trial investigation, whom they planned to involve in the seizure.”

The Kononoviches do not admit guilt for both episodes. They believe that all the posts specified in the indictment do not contradict the legislation and do not contain any calls for the overthrow of power. According to the Kononoviches, these publications contain only value judgments and criticism of the authorities, for which one cannot be prosecuted under Ukrainian and international law.

“These are not incitements,” Mykhailo believes. “Incitements are specific actions and a specific date and time. Incitements are when you say specifically: tomorrow at 12 we will do this, that, and the other. And these are just abstract joking taunts. And they want to stretch them over us, like an owl on a globe”

Regarding his publication about the Pereyaslav Council and that “Ukraine is Russia,” Mykhailo Kononovich claims that he meant not the present, but the times when that document was adopted.

“I meant historical events that no one can influence anymore. At that time, Ukrainians under Bohdan Khmelnytsky thought so. This is in the context of historical events, what does it have to do with today?” he said.

Regarding the seizure of the Dnipro Administration, the brothers claim that this is an investigator’s fiction. According to them, they did not plan anything like this and did not hold any meetings near this building.

“Sometimes I don’t even believe that this can be. It’s like some dream, idiocy. How can you make up such nonsense? Just make it up! And these are human destinies: [I have a] wife, children. They are maiming a destiny, writing a fairy tale, for which I’m facing 10 years of prison with confiscation of property. If I’m guilty, I’ll answer. But don’t make things up, don’t commit arbitrary rule!” said Mykhailo.

The Kononoviches’ case was heard by Judge Vladyslav Richter. He moved to Kyiv in 2022 after the Russians occupied the town of Borzna in Chernihiv oblast, where he worked as a judge. The court under Richter’s chairmanship examined all the written evidence. But at the beginning of 2023, the Borzna Court resumed work and the judge returned home. The case began to be heard from the beginning by Judge Hanna Serhiienko. With her, the court examined two volumes of the case out of nine, after which, in September 2024, she went on extended sick leave. The case passed to the third judge — Oleksandr Voronkin.

The Kononovich brothers claim that all this is not without reason, and judges simply do not want to make a decision in a political case where there is no evidence.

Under the chairmanship of the new judge, the process is moving very slowly. Hearings are rare and often postponed. In half a year, not even a preparatory meeting has been held, the court has only extended the term of night house arrest for the Kononoviches. At this rate, the verdict is still far away and the hearing of the Kononoviches’ case may drag on for years.

On 25 February, the Kononovich brothers reported that they were detained by police on the street who said that the Lutsk territorial recruitment centre had declared them wanted. The police delivered them to the Shevchenkivskyi district department, but eventually released them “for further clarification of circumstances.” The Kononoviches themselves immediately recorded a video stating that they were not detained by chance and “Zelensky’s regime officially wants to send them to war and kill them.” They again appealed to the “World Federation of Democratic Youth,” as well as “leftists and anti-fascists of Europe and the United States” and called for more actions near Ukrainian embassies.

This translation first appeared on ESSF