By Galina Korol | 2025-05-15

KYIV -- They carried cameras, not weapons. Now, more than 30 Ukrainian journalists have vanished into Russian prisons.

As Russia's war against Ukraine enters its fourth year, Russian occupiers have committed at least 833 documented crimes against journalists and media outlets, according to the Institute of Mass Information. Among them are 102 media workers killed -- 12 in the line of duty -- and at least 31 still in captivity. The true number may be even higher, lost in the fog of war and silence of closed prison doors.

Truth-tellers are targets

"Different organizations have different statistics," Tetyana Katrychenko, the executive director of the Media Initiative for Human Rights, told Kontur. That is because each group defines who qualifies as a journalist differently.

Russia has abducted both professional media workers and civilians who began reporting on the war through platforms like Telegram. One such case is Yevhen Ilchenko, a lawyer by training, arrested in 2022 in occupied Melitopol after launching a Telegram channel documenting life under Russian control. His final post, on July 10 that year, showed crowds waiting for documents. Two hours later, Russian soldiers came to his home.

"At first they kept him in a torture chamber in Melitopol, where they taunted him mercilessly. Then they forced him to dig trenches near Melitopol. As far as I know, he's now being held in a detention center in Rostov. But that information is from a few months ago," Svitlana Zalizetska, a member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine and editor of the Melitopol outlet RIA-Pivden, told Kontur.

Ilchenko's case, she said, is not unique. "There are many Melitopol journalists among the people the Russians have arrested."

Lawyers and international organizations have no access to those detainees, making it nearly impossible to confirm their whereabouts or conditions.

'The Kremlin's captives'

Among "the Kremlin's captives" are two of Zalizetska's close colleagues from RIA-Pivden. In August 2023, Russians arrested her colleague Heorhiy Levchenko, who was the administrator of the RIA Melitopol Telegram channel. That same month, Russians detained former RIA journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska.

"[Levchenko and Hlukhovska] both decided to stay under the occupation, but that decision cost them their freedom," Zalizetska said.

RIA-Pivden editors later learned that Levchenko faces three charges, including terrorism and treason. The treason charge, Zalizetska explained, stems from his being forced to obtain a Russian passport, required for basic movement under occupation.

"He got a passport, and literally a month later he was arrested," she said, calling it an absurd and coercive trap.

Residents of occupied areas are "chased into this yoke [of being forced to get a passport] and then [the Russian security services] pursue them."

Hlukhovska's case is even murkier. Though Russian state media aired footage of her arrest, authorities have provided no official information about her status.

Russian forces arrested Hlukhovska in Melitopol August 20, 2023, alongside other local Telegram administrators.

Her family received no official confirmation of her arrest. "Her mother even wrote to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin," said Zalizetska. "The responses in the official documents from everywhere said that no one by her name had been arrested."

Months later, the family received a vague, misleading letter claiming Hlukhovska had been "taken" for questioning, with no further details.

RIA-Pivden editors launched their own investigation and tracked her through witness testimony. According to detainees held with her, the Russians initially held Hlukhovska in an underground cell beneath a shed in Melitopol, later moved her aboveground with other women and eventually transferred her to the Pryazovske pretrial detention center.

"One of the prisoners said that she saw Anastasia [in 2024] and was in a cell with her in Taganrog," Zalizetska said. From there, the Russians moved her again. Her current whereabouts are unknown.

Witnesses claimed that Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna was also transferred around the same time. Russian authorities similarly kept her detention secret for a prolonged period.

Tortured and disappeared

Russian forces detained 27-year-old journalist Roshchyna in August 2023 while she investigated Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) involvement in abductions across occupied Zaporizhzhia province. She had reported for several Ukrainian outlets, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Last October 10, her family learned of her death when the Russian Ministry of Defense sent a letter claiming she had died on September 19.

"Not a single Russian institution has provided any information about what happened to Vika, where she is being held, whether the letter can be trusted, and if so, where the documents are that confirm her death and state the cause of death," her father told Ukrainska Pravda.

Russia withheld her body for five more months, finally returning it to Ukraine on February 25.

An investigation by the Viktoriia Project, led by Forbidden Stories, Ukrainska Pravda and other international outlets, revealed the state in which Russia returned her remains: misidentified as "unidentified male no. 757," unrecognizable and mutilated.

Forensic scientists found that someone had tortured Roshchyna before her death. Her body was missing her brain, eyes and part of her trachea, likely to obscure how she was killed.

"The official investigation is ongoing. It may shed light on the conditions of Viktoriia's detention and help identify those responsible for her torture," Ukrainska Pravda reported.

"People in captivity are being killed every day," said Zalizetska. "We are pleading for our journalists to also be exchanged. They are not traitors. They have remained loyal to Ukraine."