Danylo Dakhov and Pavlo Hrymak were both just 16 and hoping to go on to university when they were seized by the Russians in occupied Melitopol. They ‘died’ in Russian captivity. Although likely that they were tortured to death back in April 2024, information has only now been made public.
The death of the two 16-year-old lads from occupied Melitopol was first reported by Mariana Betsa, Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister in her address to the UN General Assembly on 4 September 2025 (around 11.00 here). Citing examples of Russia’s crimes against Ukrainian children, she stated that there was testimony indicating that Danylo Dakhov and Pavlo Hrymak had been killed in Russian custody. She also mentioned three young boys, who are also from Melitopol: Viktor Azarovsky; Oleh Shokol and Denys Vasylyk. Oleh was 17 when seized by the Russians in October 2023, Victor and Denys were 16. They are illegally imprisoned at the No. 2 SIZO [remand prison] in Taganrog, which is notorious for its torture of Ukrainian political prisoners. It was there that 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna was held, and almost certainly tortured, until just two weeks before dying in a Perm region prison in September 2024.
Suspilne Zaporizhzhia reported on 14 October 2025 that their sources confirmed that Danylo Dakhov and Pavlo Hrymak had died in Russian captivity. The information had not been made public earlier for safety reasons. Russia has imposed a near total blockade on information, with it especially difficult to receive, or at least, reveal information where entire families are still living under Russian occupation.
Both lads held a clear civic position and took part in various patriotic events, in cleaning up the forest and planting trees. They participated in events to honour the victims of Holodomor, the manmade Famine of 1932-33 [and other such artificial famines) and marking other national holidays.
Suspilne’s sources say that Danylo and Pavlo were seized by the Russians in August 2023, although it was only on 21 December that year that the occupation ‘Zaporizhzhia oblast police’ published propaganda videos claiming that they had detained three minors from Melitopol who were suspected of working for Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU]. The three were supposedly members of a sabotage group called ‘Black Sabotage’ and had, on instructions from the SBU, received Russian passports back in 2022 and had demonstrated an active pro-Russian position. This was, supposedly, while they were gathering reconnaissance information about places of deployment of Russian military and military leadership in the region and passing this on to the SBU. Thus far, the claim is that made against just about every civilian hostage whom the Russians have seized since the beginning of their full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The report then, however, goes on to claim that the three also “organized several terrorist acts, making attempts on the life of various officials” and also planted an explosive device on railway tracks for a subsequent “act of terrorism”.
There is, in fact, no proof of any of this, only ‘confessions’ by two young men, with blurred faces, but who were, seemingly, Danylo Dakhov and Pavlo Hrymak. They appear to be repeating what they have been told to say, what one lad freezing for a moment, as he has clearly forgotten his line or not understood what is expected of him. It is claimed that the lads, in December 2022, passed Ukraine’s Armed Forces the coordinates of a hotel and restaurant complex called Hunter’s Hall, which was the target of a Ukrainian missile strike which purportedly killed “two civilians” and injured three others. There were reports in occupation media on 10 December 2022 about a Ukrainian attack, claimed to have been carried out with the use of a HIMARS missile. All of these reports attempt to pass the strike off as having targeted “civilian infrastructure”. In fact, the hotel and restaurant complex was being used as a military base by a unit of the 19th motor rifle division from North Ossetia and was an entirely legitimate military target.
Any such attack leads to people being seized by the Russians, and it is more than likely that others have already ‘confessed’ to the role in this attributed to the three unnamed Ukrainian minors.
There is no evidence of a ‘Black Sabotage’ group, involving Melitopol minors, nor of any ‘terrorist attacks’ aside from on videoed ‘confessions’ given by lads who had been held in Russian captivity for several months already. One of the propaganda videos showed only Danylo and Pavlo.
It was reported then that the lads, and “other unidentified individuals” were facing explosives charges under Article 222.1 and 223.1 of Russia’s criminal code; as well as of ‘a terrorist act’ (Article 205 § 2) and of ‘an attempt on the life of an enforcement official or military serviceman’ (Article 317.
This was the last that was heard about the boys until Danylo and Pavlo’s parents were told in May 2024 that their sons had died. The Russians claimed that they had been killed when their homemade explosive device exploded while involved in a partisan operation. This was a brutally cynical lie, given that the lads had been in Russian captivity for close on ten months. Suspilne has learned that the lads were tortured to death in April 2024. As was the case with 16-year-old Tihran Ohannisian and Mykyta Khanharov, who were killed in Berdiansk on 24 June 2023, the Russians did not return the boys’ bodies.
It seems likely that Russia is bringing the same charges or similar against the three other young lads: Viktor Azarovsky and Denys Vasylyk, who were 16 in October 2023, when they were seized and Oleh Shokol who had turned 17 not long before.
There are witnesses who saw Victor Azarovsky soon after he was seized by men in masks or balaclavas outside his home in Melitopol on 31 October 2023 and taken away. He looked drained, terrified, and was bruised and had other marks from beating. He and the other two lads, who were seized a day or two earlier, have been imprisoned ever since, first on occupied territory, and now in one of the most notorious of Russia’s remand prisons, SIZO No. 2 in Taganrog.
Kateryna Bobrovska is representing Victor Azarovsky, and has told Radio Svoboda that there is no evidence to back the charges against him and the other two lads.
“They were tortured, forced into telling a story that didn’t happen, accused of an attempt to blow up a Russian Federation police lieutenant and place explosives on railway tracks,” she says.
Their supposed ‘trial’ is now underway at the Southern District Military Court in Rostov and more details will be reported here when they become available.
