Russia has used an unrecognized occupation ‘court’ to pass a massive 15-year sentence against Iryna Levchenko more than three years after the retired Melitopol journalist was seized in the street and disappeared. It is not even clear when the Russians formally acknowledged her ‘detention’ with this meaning that Iryna Levchenko, who is about to turn 65, could, if Russia is allowed its way, be imprisoned until close to her 80th birthday. This is with ‘spying’ charges which are not only illegal since brought under Russian legislation against a Ukrainian from occupied territory, but also nonsensical. The journalist is accused, for example, of passing to Ukraine’s Security Service information that the occupation ‘authorities’ themselves make public.
The report from the so-called ‘Zaporizhzhia regional court’ would be almost comical were the verbiage not being used to justify a 15-year sentence. A kangaroo court of an occupying state states that the “the former journalist” did not leave Melitopol “after the beginning of the special military operation”, Russia’s highly specific way or referring to its illegal invasion of another country’s territory. “She did not, however renounce her Ukrainian citizenship”. The document that the aggressor state is trying to force Ukrainians to sign, ‘renouncing their Ukrainian citizenship’ is legally meaningless. It is, however, of importance that Levchenko clearly rejected Russian citizenship and was therefore charged with ‘spying’ for Ukraine, under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code, not with ‘treason’, under Article 275.
It is asserted that Levchenko used Telegram to contact a [female] “resident of territory under the control of Ukraine’s Armed Forces” [sic!] and agreed to help the Ukrainian Security Service. This help allegedly included providing information about the “location of administrative buildings and employees of the RF authorities”, which is not, in any way, classified information. She was also claimed to have passed on information about the movements of Russian military personnel, military technology and weapons through occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia oblast. It is unclear how she was supposed to have obtained this information, and noteworthy that the only specific charge pertains to essentially public information even for the occupying state. Levchenko is claimed to have, in February 2023, “passed on information about RF ministries and departments, including enforcement bodies, with lists and addresses of employees”. A sentence copy-pasted from one report to another claims that the information passed to Ukraine “could lead to armed strikes against the position of these strategic sites” which are, in fact, readily available on the Internet. There is no suggestion that specific information was used in any actual attack.
With particular absurdity, the report seems to find something ‘incriminating’ in the fact that Levchenko had not deleted the said information, “continuing to store it until her criminal activities were stopped by employees of Russia’s FSB”.
Iryna Levchenko’s sister, Olena, has stressed that her sister was “a born journalist” who had not given up all journalist activities and habits after formally retiring. She may well have had information on her telephone which she had no reason to conceal.
Iryna Levchenko was stopped by the Russians on 6 May 2023 probably because they saw her taking a photo. Had there genuinely been evidence of long-term ‘spying’ for her own country, the invaders would not have held her incommunicado for three and a half years, with Iryna not having been officially detained or officially charged for a large part of that time.
The level of secrecy in this case, even after the Russians admitted that Levchenko was in their custody, was unprecedented with Olena reporting that even her sister’s lawyer had not been given full access to information. Iryna was also constantly moved from one SIZO [remand prison] in Russia or occupied Ukraine, to another, with huge gaps even between the censor-controlled letters finally allowed. Olena told Hromadske Radio back in August 2026 that the family did not even know if Iryna had already been sentenced or not. Any ‘hearings’ in spying cases are held behind closed doors, but in this case it is not even clear how many years there were, nor much more than that the verdict and sentence were announced on 4 September 2026.
Iryna Levchenko (b. 16.09.1961) had worked as a journalist for different Melitopol newspapers, and as correspondent for different regional and national media for 41 years. She had, however, retired two years before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and only occasionally worked in her profession. She was also involved in various civic initiatives, and clearly identified strongly as a Ukrainian, with that alone placing her in danger under Russian occupation. Her sister explained earlier that she had tried to persuade Iryna and her husband, Oleksandr Levchenko, to leave with them. The couple both had medical issues, and had chosen to remain, assuming that, because they were retired, they would be safe. They were not.
The couple were seized on 6 May 2023, with it taking some time before the family learned of their effective abduction from witnesses. Oleksandr Levchenko was, finally, released in August 2024, having been held for over 14 months in the makeshift prison / torture chambers that the Russian invaders set up in occupied Melitopol. He was handed a document claiming that he had been jailed for 21 days for ‘infringing curfew”. He had only seen his wife once and from a distance.
Oleksandr Levchenko was able to explain finally that the Russians had, in fact, stopped Iryna, with Oleksandr only ‘detained’ when he came up to find out what was going on. The couple were separated immediately and Oleksandr only fleetingly saw his wife from a difference once.
Olena points out that her sister had continued to photograph and document what was happening in the city under the Russian invaders. It was because of the photographs that the Russians stopped her and then took her away. Although Olena believes the Russians did not know who her sister was, they would have discovered this very quickly. She was well-known in Melitopol, including among the collaborators like Edward Batlytskyy, whom the Russians installed as ‘governor’ of occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast as soon as they gained control.
As reported, Olena earlier expressed frustration that the International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] which has a mandate under the Geneva Conventions to visit prisoners of war and others imprisoned on occupied territory has done nothing. It was volunteers “from abroad” who made contact with the family, and began passing them letters from Iryna, with this enabling them to send and receive two or three letters a month, although only on strictly ‘safe’ subjects, and with huge gaps when Iryna was, yet again, moved to another prison.
Iryna Levchenko is one of at least eight journalists or administrators of pro-Ukrainian Telegram channels whom the Russians abducted in 2023 and are still imprisoning. Russia is also holding around 20 Crimean Tatar and other Ukrainian civic journalists, with many, if not all, of them targeted for their courage in reporting on Russia’s armed arrests and politically motivated trials and other forms of repression. Iryna’s release has been demanded not only by Ukrainian human rights and media organizations, but by the International and European Federations of Journalists and Reporters without Borders [RSF]. All of these monstrous sentences make it clear that the repression will end only when Russia is driven from Ukrainian territory and forced to return not only prisoners of war, but also civilians illegally seized and imprisoned, either without any charge or after travesties of justice such as that to which Iryna Levchenko was subjected.
