The Kherson City Court found former Lazurne settlement head Serhiy Belyk guilty of treason and collaborationist activities.
This became known from Belyk’s verdict.
The court found that after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, Belyk voluntarily took the position of head of the so-called military-civilian administration of the settlement of Lazurne, created by the occupying authorities.
He participated in the occupiers’ meetings and events, organized propaganda activities and influenced the local population to cooperate with the Russian Federation, provided information about community facilities and institutions, assisted in the deployment of military personnel and carried out organizational work at checkpoints.
The court found Belyk’s guilt proven on the basis of evidence, including testimony from local residents who testified about his cooperation with the occupiers, participation in raids by Russian military and organization of transfers of property and resources to representatives of the Russian Federation. Witnesses also confirmed that he opened access to private households, took part in the dismantling of monuments and held propaganda events in the community’s territory.
The court also took into account video and audio recordings, online publications, and expert results that confirmed the voice and appearance belonged to the defendant. All evidentiary materials, in the court’s opinion, reliably indicate the intentional nature of Belyk’s actions aimed at harming the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Serhiy Belyk was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment with confiscation of property and deprived of the right to hold public office for 15 years. He must also pay the state 21 582 for procedural costs related to conducting the expert examination.
It should be noted that Belyk participated in the ATO.
In 2016 he was elected head of the Lazurne settlement council as an independent candidate. He was part of Vladyslav Manger’s team.
In the summer of 2018 Belyk and deputies under his control allocated a plot to one of the attackers of Kateryna Handziuk, Volodymyr Vasyanovych.
In the interrogation protocols of Serhiy Torbin, the organizer of the attack on Kateryna, he says that the issue of allocating land with the settlement council was resolved by the criminal authority Levin-Moskal.
In 2019 a search was conducted in Belyk’s office as part of the criminal case into the murder of Kateryna Handziuk. Law enforcement officers were looking for traces of assistance from Belyk to the second suspect – criminal authority Oleksiy Levin (Moskal) – in the re-registration of a recreation base.
In 2019 he secured the support of MP Oleksiy Kovalov. Already in 2020 he paid from the community budget for the work of Vladyslav Manger’s lawyers.
In the same 2020 Oleksiy Kovalov attempted to secure Belyk’s nomination for the election of the head of the settlement council from the Servant of the People party, but the party leader then intervened Oleksandr Korniienko and Belyk was removed from the party lists.
However, this did not prevent Serhiy Belyk in the autumn of 2020 from being elected head of the settlement council and from continuing to harass businesses, illegally collect money from tourists, and to appropriate funds from the state budget, which were allocated at Kovalov’s request.
The police checked whether Belyk had bribed voters, and found no evidence.
In May 2022 it became known that Belyk had gone to work for the Russians. Already in July 2022 he was notified of suspicion of collaborationism.