The head of the Kurier trade union was found guilty, but released in the courtroom

The Sergiev Posad City Court of the Moscow Region today, February 9, announced the verdict to Kirill Ukraintsev, head of the trade union of food delivery workers Kurier. The court found him guilty under the so-called Dadin article (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation; repeated violation of the rules for holding rallies) and sentenced him to a year and four months in a colony-settlement. However, this period was automatically canceled due to the ten months that the courier spent in a pre-trial detention center (a day in a detention center counts as two days in a colony-settlement). A member of the Presidential Council for Human Rights, Eva Merkacheva, congratulated Kirill Ukraintsev on social networks on his actual release and published photos of the union leader kissing his wife in the courtroom.

Kommersant talked in detail about the case of Kirill Ukraintsev. The police detained him on April 26, 2022. Investigators alleged that Kirill Ukraintsev “published online calls” for couriers and taxi drivers to “go out to protest” against violations of their labor rights, including long salary delays. On this basis, the trade union leader was accused of “repeatedly violating the procedure for organizing or holding a rally” under Art. 212.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (assumes punishment up to five years in prison). The courts extended the arrest of the activist several times, and the prosecutor ultimately demanded that he be sentenced to a year and a half in a colony-settlement.

The case of Kirill Ukraintsev had a wide resonance, including because of the strikes of couriers in 2021 and 2022 – they demanded better working conditions and higher wages. In addition, most members of the Kurier trade union work in the Delivery Club, and many social media users actively called for a boycott of this service, which also drew attention to the criminal case. The activist’s lawyer Veronika Polyakova in September last year complained to the Moscow prosecutor’s office about the Moscow department of the Investigative Committee of Russia. In an interview with Kommersant, she pointed out that the investigation was preventing the defense from familiarizing itself with the case materials, leaving six volumes of the case for one day for lawyers to study. The lawyer called this case a precedent in her practice. Support for Kirill Ukraintsev was publicly expressed by many human rights activists and politicians, including Sergei Obukhov, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Maria Starikova