Russian fighter accused of war crimes in Ukraine in 2014 stands trial in Finland

A Russian ultranationalist combatant who fought amid Russia's initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 went on trial on Thursday in Finland on charges of alleged war crimes.

Finnish prosecutors are seeking life imprisonment for Yan Petrovsky, who is also known as Voislav Toden, according to public broadcaster YLE.

Petrovsky's lawyer, Heikki Lampela, said his client — who has been in custody in Finland since entering the Nordic country in July 2023 — would deny all the charges.

Petrovsky has been under EU and US sanctions since 2022 for allegedly being a founder of the far-right neo-Nazi paramilitary group Rusich, which is suspected of terrorism crimes in Ukraine and connected with the Kremlin's mercenary Wagner Group.

Prosecutors said the charges are related to the defendant's alleged activities in Rusich, which fought in the Luhansk region against Ukrainian forces.

Petrovsky is accused of being Rusich's deputy commander and participating in acts that violate the laws of war. The defendant and the unit's soldiers are accused of killing 22 Ukrainian soldiers and seriously wounding four, according to the prosecutors.

He is also alleged by prosecutors to have carried out "acts contrary to the laws of war regarding the way of warfare and the treatment of wounded and killed enemy soldiers".

In 2014, Russia went on its first invasion of Ukraine when Moscow deployed forces to Crimea and illegally annexed the peninsula within weeks. At the same time, Kremlin-backed forces attacked eastern Ukraine, starting a long-running armed conflict, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes and leaving thousands dead.

The two self-styled so-called "people's republics" in the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk and Donetsk that same year declared unilateral independence, which has not been recognised by Ukraine or the West. The Kremlin has also claimed to have annexed the temporarily occupied territories after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Petrovsky, 37, was arrested at Helsinki Airport in July 2023 as he headed for Nice in southern France with his family. He had managed to enter Finland despite an EU-wide entry ban with the help of a new identity, according to local media.

Finland’s Supreme Court ruled in December 2023 that Petrovsky could not be extradited to Ukraine — where he faces an arrest warrant on suspicion of participating in a terrorist organisation — due to "the risk of inhumane prison conditions" there. Finnish prosecutors have previously said that the Nordic country has an obligation to try him.

The trial is expected to last until the end of January 2025.