A court has seized the homes, land, and vehicle fleet of a former Gauleiter from the Kherson region

PHOTO: Collage by Intent/AI

A court found Vitaliy Vasyutinsky, a resident of Kalanchak in the Skadovsk District, guilty of collaboration. For nearly two years, he headed the occupation administration of the so-called “Verkhniy Rogachik Municipal District,” and now, pursuant to the court’s verdict, he has lost all his property.

The verdict was handed down by theNovovorontsov District Court of Kherson Oblast.

According to the investigation, Vasyutinsky voluntarily assumed the position of “head of the Verkhniy Rogachik Municipal District” no later than October 20, 2023. The decision on his “election” was adopted by the district’s so-called “Council of Deputies.”

In this position, he, among other things, organized logistical and financial support for the occupation authority’s operations, recruited staff, received citizens with complaints about utility services, issued “municipal legal acts,” and represented the administration in Russian courts.

The court classified these actions under Part 5 of Article 111-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine—voluntarily assuming a position in an illegal authority in a temporarily occupied territory.

Investigators documented posts on the occupation administration’s Telegram channel in which a man resembling Vasyutynsky congratulated district residents on “Russia Day” and urged people to vote in the “Russian presidential election.” On the day of the “elections,” he also commented on their organization in a post on the administration’s page.

A facial recognition analysis compared the images to Vasyutinsky’s passportphoto and confirmed that all the materials depict the same person.

One of the witnesses identified Vasyutinsky in a photograph during the pretrial investigation; the defense requested that this evidence be ruled inadmissible due to the lack of cross-examination, but the court rejected this motion.

The defendant’s attorney, who had no contact with him, asked for her client to be acquitted. She insisted that photos and videos from the internet cannot be considered reliable evidence of a person’s identity, and that merely being present in the occupied territory constitutes a form of coercion under the Geneva Convention.

The court rejected these arguments, noting that his voluntary participation was confirmed not only by the fact that he held a position but also by his prolonged public appearances on behalf of the occupying administration—without any signs of coercion.

Vasyutinsky never appeared at any of the court hearings. Investigators placed him on the wanted list in April 2025, and the case was heard in absentia.

The court sentenced Vasyutinsky to 8 years in prison and barred him from holding leadership positions in government bodies for 13 years. The prosecutor had sought a harsher sentence—10 years in prison and a 15-year ban on holding office.

The court confiscated all of the convicted man’s property. The list includes: