In brief: Russia has transferred Vadym Golda, a Ukrainian staff member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to a medical correctional facility in Russia’s Tambov region, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Monday, Nov. 9. If confirmed, Golda would be the third OSCE employee moved from occupied Ukraine to Russia in violation of the Geneva Conventions, Sybiha pointed out, noting that the transfer may amount to a war crime.
Russia has moved a detained Ukrainian employee of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to a medical correctional facility in its Tambov region, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, warning that the transfer may amount to a war crime.
Vadym Golda, along with two other Ukrainian staff members of the OSCE’s former Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine (SMM), has been detained by the Kremlin since 2022. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison by the so-called Supreme Court of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, for alleged espionage.
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“Moscow’s blatant disregard of international law has no limits,” Sybiha said in a statement on Monday, Nov. 9.
“All three OSCE SMM staff members - Dmytro Shabanov, Maksym Petrov and Vadym Golda - must be finally freed. Now,” he added.
Sybiha’s remarks came on the same day the UN Security Council met to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, as one of the council’s five permanent members, Russia holds veto power over its final resolutions – allowing Moscow to block action on its own war.
Contact lost in October
Sybiha initially reported that Golda’s whereabouts were unknown on Nov. 7, noting that he might be transferred to Siberia.
“He has been held incommunicado since October 15,” Sybiha said at the time. “This is yet another blatant disregard by Russia of its obligations under the Geneva Conventions.”
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He demanded that Russia provide credible and verifiable information on where all three men are held and in what conditions, and grant immediate and unrestricted access to them.
The OSCE community was also urged to step up pressure on Moscow to secure their release.
Detained since 2022
Golda, Petrov and Shabanov were part of an OSCE mission sent to Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014. The mission was deployed with the consensus of all OSCE participating states – including Russia at the time.
Shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022, they were arrested in Russian-controlled areas and later sentenced by Moscow-installed courts.
Around the same time, the OSCE closed its field operations in Ukraine following Russia’s abrupt refusal to join consensus on extending their mandates.
In April 2022, OSCE leaders called for the release of national mission members detained in Russian-controlled areas, simultaneously condemning Moscow’s hostile rhetoric against the SMM staff.
“Their work has been crucial in many areas, including maintaining contacts with relevant stakeholders and civil society, and facilitating localized ceasefires for vital infrastructure repair, directly helping to alleviate human suffering,” OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid said at the time.
In September of that year, Petrov and Shabanov were sentenced to 13 years in prison on treason charges. The OSCE condemned the verdicts, noting that both men were still OSCE staff and had been performing official duties mandated by all 57 participating states.
In July 2024, Russian prosecutors claimed that Golda, a security assistant to the mission, had collected information for foreign intelligence in 2021 on industrial facilities that were later hit by missiles.
According to UNN, The Russian-controlled court also ordered the confiscation of 43 armored vehicles used by the mission.
In March and July of 2025, Russia moved Shabanov to a penal colony in Omsk, and Petrov to Chelyabinsk – both in Siberia, AFP reported.
Despite repeated calls for their release from OSCE leadership and participating states, Moscow is yet to fulfill that request.
Moscow’s growing friction with the OSCE
The detentions come as the OSCE continues to document Russian war crimes and human rights abuses in its war against Ukraine.
In July, independent experts appointed under the OSCE’s Moscow Mechanism – which 41 participating states invoked in May – presented a report to the OSCE Permanent Council, concluding that Russia had systematically indoctrinated and militarized Ukrainian children.
Only a month later, Moscow declined to invite the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe September’s State Duma elections, making it the third consecutive nationwide vote held without its monitors.
Both the OSCE and Ukrainian authorities said Russian-organized elections in occupied parts of Ukraine would have no validity under international law.
On Oct. 1, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) adopted a new resolution, declaring Russia’s Sept. 18-20 Duma elections illegitimate.
Meanwhile, Moscow has also long accused the former monitoring mission of working against the Kremlin.
Russian authorities previously claimed that some SMM staff passed intelligence to Kyiv instead of monitoring, accusations the OSCE has rejected.
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