Former Russia-appointed governor in Crimea on trial for breaching UK sanctions

By Sam Tobin

LONDON (Reuters) - A Russian politician appointed by President Vladimir Putin as governor of Russian-annexed Crimea's largest city went on trial in London on Tuesday, charged with breaching British sanctions in the first prosecution of its kind.

Dmitrii Ovsiannikov – who was appointed governor of Sevastopol in July 2016, two years after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine – is charged with trying to circumvent sanctions between February 2023 and January 2024.

The 48-year-old is accused of opening a bank account and getting his wife Ekaterina Ovsiannikova, 47, to pay 76,000 pounds (around $98,600) into it, some of which was so he could buy a Mercedes-Benz SUV.

Prosecutors say Ovsiannikov then got his brother Alexei Owsjanikow, 47, to buy the car and insurance for it, before Owsjanikow later paid just over 41,000 pounds for his brother's children's private school fees.

Ovsiannikov is charged with seven counts of circumventing sanctions and two counts of possessing or using criminal property. His brother, Owsjanikow, and his wife, Ovsiannikova, face five and four counts of circumventing sanctions respectively.

All three deny the charges and their trial began on Tuesday at Southwark Crown Court, where prosecutor Paul Jarvis said Sevastopol was "a strategically significant city so far as the Russian annexation of Crimea was concerned".

In 2017, Ovsiannikov won an election for governor of Sevastopol, shortly after which he was sanctioned by the European Union on the grounds his actions compromised Ukraine's sovereignty, Jarvis said.

Following Britain's formal exit from the EU, Ovsiannikov was sanctioned in December 2020 under Britain's new domestic legislation.

Ovsiannikov successfully challenged EU sanctions in 2022 and in 2023 he asked Britain's Foreign Office to overturn his sanctions, which Jarvis said was significant.

"He would not have applied to cancel his designation under domestic law unless he knew that he was designated under domestic law," Jarvis told the jury. "And if he knew ... his wife and brother must have known too."

Jarvis added that the defendants say they either did not know Ovsiannikov was sanctioned or did not realise he was not permitted to receive the help they gave him.

He told jurors they had to decide what they knew and understood about Ovsiannikov's status under Britain's Russian sanctions regime.

The National Crime Agency said when Ovsiannikov was charged last year that he was the first person to be charged in Britain with breaching sanctions relating to Russia.

The trial is due to conclude next week.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin; Editing by Alex Richardson)