Russian court fines graduate for refusing to work in occupied Mariupol

In the first case of its kind reported by the media, a St. Petersburg court has fined a recent medical graduate 275,000 rubles (€2,730) for refusing to take a job in the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol upon completing her studies, the court’s press service said on Friday.

The court concluded that Valeriya Guyva, a graduate of the St. Petersburg Chemistry and Pharmacy University, had broken her contract on vocational training. She had agreed that within two months of graduation she would sign an employment contract with a medical centre in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don, where she would work for at least three years.

Guyva’s father, Vyacheslav, was the defendant in the case as his daughter was a minor when she entered university. His lawyer insisted that Guyva was not told about the vacancy at the Rostov-on-Don hospital, and was instead offered a job in Mariupol “where hostilities are ongoing and there were serious risks”.

The court ruled that the vocational training contract Guyva signed did not specify the job would be in any given region, and Guyva therefore had no valid reason for refusing to work in Mariupol.

The Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, which was occupied by Russian forces in spring 2022 after a months-long siege that left the city in ruins, was formally annexed by Russia in September 2022 as part of the so-called Donetsk “people’s republic”.