Ruslan Petrovych Kotsaba () is a Ukrainian journalist, activist, blogger and conscientious objector who has been described as a pro-Russian blogger by USA Today and as a prisoner of conscience by human rights organisations.
Kotsaba is known for his call in January 2015 to boycott the fourth wave of mobilization in Ukraine during the war in Donbas. In May 2016 he was found guilty of obstructing the activities of the armed forces and was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months imprisonment. He was acquitted by the Court of Appeal and released in July 2016 after having spent 524 days in prison. The acquittal was annulled in June 2017 and the trial was still ongoing in 2022.
As of 2022, Kotsaba is a controversial figure in his country and abroad, and has been a victim of threats and politically motivated violence.
Early years
Ruslan Kotsaba was born in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1966. Ecologist by education, he graduated from the Ukrainian National Forestry University and the National Academy for Public Administration.
In the 1990s he participated in the Revolution on Granite, and during the Orange Revolution he led the regional organisation of the national-liberal Pora party. At the beginning of 2005 he joined the civic movement associated with Vladyslav Kaskiv, who was elected as a member of parliament for Our Ukraine–People's Self-Defense Bloc in 2007. As a leading exponent of the Ukrainian nationalist movement in the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, he was the regional chairman of the association named after Vasyl Stus, whose mission is preserving the memory of the victims of Soviet repressions in the Ukrainian SSR, and in 2009 he was appointed director of the local named after Stepan Bandera.
In 2013–2014, Kotsaba was in revolutionary Kyiv filming videos and taking active part in the Euromaidan protests. He supported the Revolution of Dignity and identified with right-wing political forces.
In the summer of 2014, as a freelance correspondent of the TV channel 112 Ukraine, Kotsaba covered the course of hostilities in Donbas visiting both sides of the conflict. The experience in Donbas had a profound effect on him. He drove through the Anti-terrorist Operation Zone posting materials on his blog about Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers, in the camp of the Aidar Battalion he interviewed Nadiya Savchenko, and in Luhansk he had contacts with leaders of the self-proclaimed republic. In his reports from the Donbas he was critical of the Ukrainian armed forces, and claimed that there were "almost" no regular Russian troops in the Luhansk People's Republic — following his arrest in 2015, these claims by Kotseba were widely criticised in the Ukrainian journalist community.
At the time, Kotsaba described himself as a Ukrainian patriot and a "typical Ukrainian-speaking right-winger" ("I was on the Maidan, I am a Catholic, I respect Bandera") who did not oppose the secession of the country's eastern provinces and claimed that a "bad peace" was better than a "good war".
The case of high treason
YouTube video "I refuse to be mobilized" In mid-January 2015, on the eve of the first stage of the Fourth wave of mobilization, Kotsaba published on YouTube a video message "I refuse to be mobilized", in which he declared that he was ready to serve time in prison as long as required by law, but was not going to join the army. He claimed that there were very few Russian soldiers in the Donbas, called the war in the Donbas a "civil war" and urged all "decent people" to boycott the mobilisation. He said: "It’s better for me to serve two to five years in prison than to deliberately kill my compatriots who live in the east ... Refuse this mobilization, because this is hell, this is horror! It is impossible for people in the 21st century to kill others just because they want to live separately".
Kotsaba's public stance attracted the attention of the Russian media, and Kotsaba came specially to Moscow to participate in a television programme on Russia-1. Following Kotsaba's arrest and trial, his YouTube video received more than 400,000 views, 6000 likes and 600 dislikes.
Arrest and trials
At the end of January 2015, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) started a pre-trial investigation at the request of a citizen and on 7 February Kotsaba was arrested. He was charged with violating Part 1 of Art. 111 (High treason) and Part 1 of Art. 114-1 (Obstruction of the lawful activities of the armed forces of Ukraine during a special period) of the Criminal Code, and could have faced a sentence of 5 to 15 years in prison.