Denis Lialka

A resident of Kherson (Ukraine), a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. On 24 April 2022, according to his own statements, he returned home and decided to stay there, to be a volunteer and to engage in the wholesale sale and supply of household chemicals and food products. On 6 August (according to other data — 14 July) 2022, he was detained and beaten in his apartment, after which he was taken to the basement of an MVD building, where he was tortured with electric shocks and beaten, being required to provide contacts of officers of the SBU and Ukrainian intelligence, as well as the location of weapons and caches. After the beatings, he was hung on a grate, then beaten again and again hung, and shots were fired near him. Before a polygraph examination, he was told that if he failed it, he would die in the torture chamber. According to his own statements, he signed confessional statements under the threat of being shot. Lyalyka also stated that he and others prosecuted in the case were forced to leave fingerprints on weapons and components of explosives. On 6 October 2022, he was taken to Simferopol; up to the border he was transported in a car trunk together with another defendant in the case, Konstantin Reznik, and at the border they were transferred to a bus. Shortly before the transfer, Lialyka was forced to sign certain sheets, the contents of which were unknown to him. In the remand prison in Simferopol, Lialyka was also beaten. There he was charged with preparation for the commission of an act of international terrorism. He was later taken to Moscow. Subsequently, he gave confessional statements to correspondents of “Rossiia 24”. Lialyka was also charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist community. In court, he retracted his confessional statements. On 30 January 2026, he was sentenced to 14 years in a strict-regime penal colony.

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