An Odesa court has found Volodymyr Saldo, a Ukrainian politician turned top Russian proxy in the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, guilty of treason, collaborationism, and justifying the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Saldo was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in jail with confiscation of property and a ban to hold managerial state positions, the Malynovskyi district court announced on Nov. 8.
It was proved that Saldo, a Kherson councilman at the time of Moscow's 2o22 invasion of Ukraine, defected to Russia "and actively helped the aggressor country to harm Ukraine's national security," the Prosecutor General's Office said on Telegram.
Russia placed Saldo in charge of the illegal occupation administration in Kherson Oblast, where he "ensured the formation of occupation services, institutions in all spheres of life in the region," according to the prosecutors.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
"The convict exercised his powers with the forceful support of Russian service personnel and actual coercion of locals to recognize the occupation authorities."
Saldo, who was once Kherson's mayor and a national lawmaker, is one of the highest-profile Ukrainian collaborators. He fled Kherson before it was liberated by Ukrainian forces on Nov. 11.
Ukraine's High Anti-Corruption Court already confiscated part of the assets belonging to Saldo on May 9.
Among the collaborator's assets confiscated at the time were five land plots, four non-residential buildings, two houses, and three apartments in Kherson, Odesa, and Russian-occupied Crimea.
