Occupation emergency officer from Henichesk sentenced to ten years in prison

Vadym Pikul, a 48-year-old resident of Henichesk, voluntarily headed the district department of the occupation's Civil Defense and Emergency Situations Service. On December 4, the Kherson City Court found him guilty in absentia of collaboration.

According to the Center for Investigative Journalism, before the occupation of Kherson region, Pikul worked as the head of the municipal specialized emergency rescue diving service of the Genichesk City Council. In 2022, he voluntarily headed the Genichesk district department of the occupation's civil defense and emergency service. In 2023, he was transferred to the position of deputy head of the department - head of the department of regulatory and technical management of supervision and preventive work of the occupation main department of the Russian Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Disaster Relief in the Kherson region.

According to the witnesses, Vadym Pikul had been working in the Genichesk District Department of Civil Defense and Emergency Situations since 2004, and later retired. In April 2022, a witness learned that Pikul had agreed to head a similar occupation structure in Genichesk.

The court qualified Vadym Pikul's actions as collaboration. He was sentenced in absentia to ten years in prison with confiscation of property and a ban on holding positions in government bodies, state and municipal enterprises, institutions and organizations providing public services for 15 years.

Vadym Pikul will be confiscated 1/1 share of a 0.0571-hectare land plot, 1/1 share of a 0.1-hectare land plot for individual summer cottage construction in the resort village of Strilkove, Genichesk community, 1/1 share of a 0.09-hectare land plot, 1/1 share of a residential extension, 27/200 shares of an apartment and a trailer. The CHR added that the court's verdict has not yet entered into force.

Earlier, a resident of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Likunovych, who took the position of "starosta" in the village of Myroliubivka and actively cooperated with the occupation administration, was sentenced to 10 years in prison with confiscation of property. However, the sentence was announced in absentia.

Prior to that, the former head of the village of Volodymyrivka, Olena Zavorikhina, who had sided with the Russians on her own, was sentenced to 15 years in prison with confiscation of property. A local resident will be tried for distributing Russian newspapers in Kherson. The case against her has been submitted to the court.

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