MOSCOW. Dec 20 (Interfax) - Investigators are offering the arrested Ukrainian sailors to sign a pre-trial agreement, which envisages recognition of their guilt, Nikolai Polozov, a lawyer for one of the accused, told Interfax.
"We know that these people are Federal Security Service officials and it is not a one-off situation, we currently know of seven such situations. The sailors are telling their lawyers that three people are coming to them, offering them to sign a pre-trial agreement, and the investigators are not inviting any of the defense lawyers to participate in the questionings, calling them talks," Polozov said.
The accused are refusing the Federal Security Service officials' offer as they consider themselves POWs, he said.
"Even the sailors fellow inmates are being involved, they talk to them about the alleged benefits of a pre-trial agreement. I believe that such actions by the investigators are absolutely illegal and they violate the right of our clients to defense. The investigators are trying to take advantage of the fact that the foreign citizens do not know the Russian legislation to make their work easier, because if they admit their guilt there will be nothing to investigate," the lawyer said.
The lawyers will appeal the investigators' actions and will also turn to Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova, he said.
The Russian border guard used weapons to stop three Ukrainian naval vessels, the Yany Kapu tug and the Berdyansk and the Nikopol armored gunboats, on their way from Odesa to Mariupol near the Kerch Strait on November 25. The ships were convoyed to Kerch.
The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said the Ukrainian warships entered Russia's territorial waters on orders by Kyiv and described the incident as an act of provocation coordinated by two Ukrainian Security Service officers. Russia also claimed that Kyiv did not duly notify it that Ukrainian naval vessels were planning to pass through the Kerch Strait.
Kyiv called the Russian border guard's actions unlawful and accused Moscow of violating the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and a treaty between Ukraine and Russia on cooperation in using the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait.
The Ukrainians are charged with "conspiracy by a group of persons or an organized group to illegally cross the border using violence or the threat to use violence" (Russian Criminal Code Article 322 Part 3). If found guilty, the Ukrainians might face up to six years in prison.
Courts in Simferopol and Kerch remanded 22 sailors and two Ukrainian Security Service officials in custody for nearly two months.
All of the Ukrainians have been transported from Crimea to Moscow; 21 of them have been put to the Lefortovo detention facility, and the other three, who were wounded, have been placed in the infirmary of the Matrosskaya Tishina detention facility.
Kyiv calls the detained sailors prisoners of war. The FSB says they cannot be regarded as POWs, as they are charged with a crime and Russia and Ukraine are not in a state of war or military conflict.