(18 Sep 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bali, Indonesia – 18 September 2025
1. The car carrying the defendants enters the courthouse complex
2. Various of Ukrainian defendant, Roman Nazarenko, walking to the courtroom
3. Nazarenko sits inside the courtroom waiting for the trial to begin
4. Various of Nazarenko sitting in the defendant’s chair with an interpreter while the judge reads the verdict
STORYLINE:
A Ukrainian man arrested in Thailand and extradited to Indonesia after seven months on the run was convicted Thursday of producing illegal drugs on the Indonesian tourist island of Bali and sentenced to life in prison.
Roman Nazarenko, 40, became a suspect after police raided a villa in Bali in May 2024 and found a lab in the basement to grow marijuana and produce a precursor of the synthetic drug ecstasy.
As a fugitive listed by Interpol, he was arrested in December at Bangkok’s international airport while he tried to flee to Dubai.
Nazarenko, who argued during the trial that he was tricked into joining the drug ring but who prosecutors said was one of the masterminds, sat silently as a panel of three judges at Denpasar District Court handed down the verdict Thursday.
A Russian man identified by prosecutors as the overall mastermind of the drug ring, Oleg Tkachuck, remains at large.
The same court in January sentenced two Ukrainian brothers, Mykyta Volovod and Ivan Volovod, and a Russian man, Konstantin Krutz, to 20 years in prison each.
They had been arrested during the raid on the villa.
Nazarenko expressed his remorse during his trial, and argued that he had been tricked into providing the necessary equipment, and that he had no idea how the lab worked.
Bali has long been popular with Russians and Ukrainians, but since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 it has become a magnet for thousands of people from those two countries who are seeking to escape the horrors of war.
Visitors from Russia especially have surged.
Despite their home countries being at war, Russians and Ukrainians have collaborated in crime rings on Indonesia’s most famous holiday island, said Marthinus Hukom, the head of Indonesia’s National Narcotics Agency.
Government data shows that the number of Russian tourists visiting the Southeast Asian idyll in 2022 was 57,860.
The figure rose significantly each year, reaching 180,215 by the end of 2024.
AP video by Firdia Lisnawati
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