Oleksandr Kolchenko

Olexandr Kolchenko and three more Crimean pro-Ukrainian activists: Olexiy Chyrniy, Gennadiy Afanasyev and Oleg Sentsov are united by a common criminal case of the so-called "Crimean terrorists". All four have been arrested and imprisoned in Russia after the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation. On 7 September 2019 Kolchenko was released in a prisoner swap.

On 7 September 2019, in a prisoner swap with Ukraine, Russia released Olexandr Kolchenko and same day he returned to Kyiv where he - and other returning prisoners - was welcomed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In June 2015 the investigation of the Kolchenko and Sentsov criminal case was finished and the case went to trial. On July 31, 2015 the Rostov-on-Don military court started hearings on this case. Olexandr Kolchenko stood trial together with Oleg Sentsov.

On August 25, 2015 the board of military judges chaired by the judge Sergey Mikhailyuk sentenced Olexandr Kolchenko and Oleg Sentsov to 10 and 20 years respectively. When the verdict was pronounced, Kolchenko and Sentsov started to sing the Ukrainian National Anthem.

The President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko awarded Olexandr Kolchenko an Order for Courage First Class (Ukrainian: Орден «За мужність» ) for personal courage and dedication in upholding constitutional rights and freedoms for the integrity of the Ukrainian state on September 24, 2015.

Olexandr Kolchenko was detained on May 16, 2014 in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine. He was convicted of arson of the offices of Russian political organizations and planning the bombing of the Soviet Memorial monument in Crimea. On May 23, 2014 Olexandr was convoyed to Moscow and imprisoned in the Lefortovo prison.

According to his lawyer, Svetlana Sidorkina, Kolchenko was illegally issued with a Russian passport, dated May 26, 2014, when he was already in detention. Kolchenko has sent a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights against Russian citizenship forcibly having been conferred on him.

From 2010 to 2013, Kolchenko was an active member of the independent trade union "Student Action" composed of socialists and anarchists advocating free education, student rights, and autonomy of universities. He was involved to numerous events and public campaigns to protect workers' rights and the environment. He was supporting the struggles of Crimean Trolleybus employees and protesting against construction of a contaminant port in Crimea.

Born in a working-class family, Olexandr Kolchenko worked as a loader at the post while studying tourism management at the geographic faculty of Tavrida National University in Simferopol. He became a supporter of anarchist, antifascist and internationalist ideas. Since 2007, Kolchenko has been an active militant of the local antifascist movement. He staged numerous street protests against manifestations of fascism in the region, and participated in clashes with both Ukrainian and pro-Russian far right. He also organized actions of solidarity with Russian antifascists who fell victims of the neo-Nazi terror or government repression, including Anastasia Baburova and Ivan Khutorskoy.

Olexandr Olexandrovych Kolchenko (Ukrainian: Олександр Олександрович Кольченко , Russian: Александр Александрович Кольченко , nicknamed "Tundra", born November 26, 1989) is a Ukrainian left-wing and trade union activist, antifascist, anarchist, ecologist, archaeologist, who has been convicted of terrorism by the Russian administration of Crimea in 2014.