THE AFTERMATHS OF THE OCCUPATION: A POLITICAL REPRESSIONS SYSTEM PART 3 of the repressions is determined by the total control of all spheres of so- cial life on the peninsula. In general, the mere existence of any institu- tions not controlled by the self-pro- claimed Crimean authorities is seen as a potential threat to the occupa- tion regime. The systemic nature of the repression is conR rmed by the good organization and coordination of various public bodies: registration authorities, police, prosecutor’s of- Pictured: Conditionally sentenced to 2 years and R ce, courts, and paramilitary groups 6 months of imprisonment under the th (the so-called ‘Crimean self-defense’). February 26 case Eskender Nebiev These crimes are not directed at random individuals, but at a particular group of people who can be deemed to be the representatives of the civil society. It should be noted that crime victims vary in age, gender, occupation, property status, social origin, place of residence, religion, ideology, etc. However, what they all have in common is the public activity not controlled by the authorities and/or a real or al- leged alternative compared to the pro-government point of view. A detention of the Euromaidan activist Aleksander Kostenko on February 8, 2015 with subsequent 4 year and 2 months’ prison term bacame a wake-up call. He was charged with ‘being aware of the riots in Kyiv aimed at the illegal overthrow of the constitution- al order’, on February 18, 2014 in Kyiv, ‘he threw a stone’ targeting a militiaman out of the ‘sense of ideological hatred and hostility towards the internal aT airs o7 cers’. This formed a dangerous precedent, when the Russian Federation prosecuted a Ukrainian citizen for the acts allegedly committed, according to the authorities, on the territory of Ukraine in Kyiv during the Euromaidan protests against a citizen of Ukraine, more- over, who was at that time a representative of the Ukrainian law enforcement agency and an o7 cer of the Crimean division of the ‘Berkut’ riot police. It is needless to say that such charges are outside the legal environment. Already in January 2016, the o7 cial website of the so-called Crimean Prosecutor’s O7 ce hosted a similar statement. It concerns the criminal case against Andrey Kolo- 6 miets . The investigation alleges that he was ‘a member of an extremist organiza- tion’ – the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UIA), during the mass riots in Kyiv in January 2014 and made an assassination attempt on two members of the Crimean division of the ‘Berkut’ riot police, throwing Molotov cocktails at them. 6 http://rkproc.ru/ru/news/obvinyaemyy-po-delu-o-posyagatelstve-na-zhizn-sotrudnikov-berkuta-predstanet- pered-sudom 39