The former member of the far-right Rusich paramilitary group was handed a life sentence by the Helsinki district court last year.Voislav Torden pictured in court. Image: Mikko Koski / YleYle News12:34The court of appeal in Helsinki has found Russian citizen Voislav Torden guilty of three war crimes instead of four, and reduced the sentence handed down to him by a lower court last year.In March 2025, the Helsinki District Court sentenced Torden to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of committing war crimes in Ukraine in 2014.At the time, the district court ruled that Torden was indisputably a member of the neo-Nazi Rusich paramilitary group, which fought against Ukrainian forces in the Luhansk separatist region over a decade ago.Torden, formerly known as Yan Petrovsky, was accused of leading a Rusich unit which deceived Ukrainian soldiers in September 2014 by hanging a Ukrainian flag at a checkpoint. When the Ukrainians stopped, Rusich fighters opened fire.The act was considered a war crime because of the deceptive use of the Ukrainian flag and because of suspicions that the Rusich unit later killed four Ukrainians who had been wounded in the fighting. In total, 22 Ukrainian soldiers died as a result of the Rusich ambush.In its ruling on Monday morning, the appeal court said there was insufficient evidence that Torden had shot the wounded soldiers himself or that he was the superior responsible for giving the order.The appeal court did however rule that Torden had participated in the ambush and had some involvement in the killing of the wounded soldiers.The court therefore sentenced Torden to 12 and a half years in prison.Torden himself has long denied he was involved in combat operations with the Rusich unit, instead claiming that he was making propaganda and recruitment videos in the region.Exceptional trial for Finnish courtsTorden's trial was held in Finland because he entered the country from Russia by car in 2023 via the Vaalimaa border crossing point.Finnish authorities soon discovered that Torden was subject to an entry ban for the entire Schengen area.The next day, Torden was detained at Helsinki Airport just before boarding a flight to Nice, France. He was initially detained for violating the entry ban, but then his former name, Yan Petrovsky, was found on an EU sanctions list.The Finnish Supreme Court later ruled that Torden could not be extradited to Ukraine due to poor conditions in its prisons and the belief that he would not receive a fair trial there.The case was first tried in the Helsinki District Court.Torden appealed the court's verdict earlier this year.