Husband and wife from Melitopol sentenced to 20 and 18 years over alleged bombing and poisoning plot
Gennady and Olga Kapralov, residents of occupied Melitopol, have been sentenced to 20 and 18 years’ imprisonment, respectively, the Southern District Military Court reports. The prosecution alleges that they were preparing several terrorist attacks.
Gennady Kapralov’s testimony:
On 29 May, 61-year-old Gennady Kapralov told the court how he and his wife were abducted, held unofficially, and tortured. Mediazona has published an account of his testimony.
In 2022 he became friends with a new neighbour, Diliaver Kurshutov. In the summer of 2023, Kurshutov asked him three times to come along to the cemetery and collect something there: each time, Gennady Kapralov waited by the fence, watching their bicycles. After the second trip, Kurshutov found a ‘dark-coloured wrapped package’ and said the object inside was ‘dangerous’. Later, when Kapralov visited Kurshutov’s home, Kurshutov showed him the contents of the package, telling him it contained explosives and that a Ukrainian serviceman named Sasha had asked him to collect it from the cemetery. On the third trip to the cemetery, Kurshutov collected another package, and Kapralov offered to hide it on his own property by the fence.
He said he never discussed with Kurshutov how the contents of the package would be used, and that Olga knew nothing about his dealings with Kurshutov.
On 21 August 2023, Russian security forces stopped Gennady and Olga Kapralov on the street to check their documents. ‘I gather they were surprised it was a Ukrainian passport,’ he explained. The couple were detained pending further checks and taken to a former outpatient clinic, where they were held unofficially for the following 95 days.
Gennady Kapralov says that at first he was shown photographs of unfamiliar people and asked which Ukrainian servicemen he knew, and then ‘the beatings began’, along with torture: ‘It’s called a ‘tapik’ [a field telephone used to administer electric shocks]. They applied electric current to different parts of my body. They knocked out my upper teeth. I slept sitting up there for a month, though who cares about that now… Once they taped me to a chair and hit me in the chest. I have an irregular heartbeat sometimes. I asked if they could give me my medication. But that’s beside the point. There was a time they brought Olya in, and I was already sitting there taped to a chair, and they started beating her too. She had a plastic bag over her head as well.’ He attempted suicide, but was pulled from the noose and taken to a cell with other detainees, having previously been held alone.
In early September, Gennady Kapralov remembered that he had hidden a package that probably contained explosives near his fence, and grew frightened: ‘If my daughter decided to change the fence and the builders moved the stone, who knows what would happen, whether it would go off or not.’ He told the security forces, was driven home, and showed them the hiding place. After that, he continued to be held in a secret prison for more than two months.
On 24 November, Gennady and Olga were brought home and made to take part in a staged video of their ‘arrest’ before being given interrogation transcripts to sign. Gennady signed his statement without reading it, as he had no glasses and was afraid the torture would continue. After that, the couple were formally placed in the temporary detention facility in Melitopol. A lawyer brought Gennady Kapralov his glasses and told his children where they were being held.
Olga Kapralova’s testimony:
53-year-old Olga Kapralova gave her testimony on 1 September. ‘They gave me electric shocks, strangled me, gave me some kind of injections, hit me, I don’t know with what, because I had a plastic bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back,’ she said of her time in the secret prison. ‘By November 2023 I was in such a state that I was ready to sign anything they put in front of me.’
She said the man who had held her and her husband at the former outpatient clinic also visited her at the temporary detention facility, bringing documents for her to sign and threatening that the torture would continue.
The prosecution’s version of events. What the Kapralovs are charged with:
— In May 2023, expressing a willingness to assist a terrorist community that included Diliaver Kurshutov and Oleksandr Kohut, a member of Ukraine’s security services;
— In July that year, retrieving from a hiding place ‘explosive substances and devices, and ampoules of chemical weapons of mass destruction, concealed in three juice cartons’;
— Receiving instructions from one of the community’s members (believed to be Kohut) to prepare the killings of Russian servicemen and ‘individuals contributing to the goals of the “special military operation”‘ by means of bombings and poisoning food and water;
— Agreeing with another member of the community (believed to be Kurshutov) to set off bombs disguised as power banks in cafés and at a market;
— Filling a toy horse with explosives and hiding it in a tree hollow.
Diliaver Kurshutov was sentenced in September 2025. He received 10 years’ imprisonment, having reached a pre-trial agreement with investigators. The pro-Kremlin broadcaster Ren TV reported that Kohut had offered Kurshutov two thousand dollars for poisoning Russian servicemen or collaborators, and ten thousand dollars for a successful attempt on the life of Yevgeny Balitsky, the occupation-appointed ‘head of Zaporizhzhia Oblast’. The poisons to be used were reportedly an analogue of the toxic chemical BZ, methyl alcohol, and methadone. TASS claimed that Kurshutov was detained in February 2024. Mediazona, however, cites testimony he gave in September 2023, noting that it made no mention of Gennady and Olga Kapralov.
