A court in Donetsk sentenced a mercenary from Georgia to 14 years in a penal colony in absentia.

The Supreme Court of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) sentenced Nadim Khmaladze, a 60-year-old Georgian citizen, in absentia, finding him guilty under Part 3, Article 359 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Participation of a mercenary in an armed conflict"), the DPR prosecutor's office reported on March 24.

"Taking into account the position of the state prosecutor, the court sentenced Khmaladze in absentia to 14 years in prison to serve his sentence in a high—security penal colony," the agency's website says.

It was established that Khmaladze was in Ukraine from March 2022 to March 2023, where he took courses in fire training and mine-blasting at training centers.

After that, as part of various armed formations, the mercenary took part in hostilities in the city of Irpen, the village of Gostomel in the Buchan district and the city of Bucha in the Kiev region of Ukraine. His actions were directed against representatives of the DPR law enforcement agencies, as well as against the military of the Russian Armed Forces (AF). For them, he received a reward of more than 745 thousand rubles.

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On March 21, Georgian citizen Mikhail Kamkhadze was found guilty in absentia of training mercenaries and participating in hostilities on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and sentenced to 23 years in prison, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reported. The accused arrived in Ukraine in 2017 and joined a paramilitary group.