Russia claims it ‘detained’ a young Ukrainian student on ‘spying charges’ two years after abducting her in Kherson region

The Russian FSB in occupied Crimea asserted on 18 October that they had ‘detained’ a 23-year-old woman from Kherson oblast whom they accuse of passing on information about the Russian army to Ukraine’s Security Service [SBU].  If, as seems likely, this is Hanna Yeltsova, the FSB could not have ‘detained’ her in October 2024 as Russia has been illegally holding the Kherson student hostage since she was abducted from her home on 29 November 2022.  Hanna, who was about to turn 21 when seized, had been held almost totally incommunicado for close on two years. 

Russia has been abducting civilians since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, with men and women often held incommunicado for months or years.  It is quite common for Russian enforcement bodies to deny any knowledge of a person’s whereabouts and for them to be held without any formal status.  This is in such flagrant violation of international law that when they finally do admit to holding a person, and fabricate some charges against them, they often lie about when the person came to be in Russian captivity.  The charge in a huge, and rapidly increasing, number of cases is repeated, almost verbatim, from one ‘prosecution’ to the next.  The Russians accuse Ukrainians, living on Ukrainian territory, of informing Ukraine’s Security Service or Military Intelligence of the illegal movements of fighters and technology of the aggressor state.  This is claimed to fall under Article 276 (spying) of Russia’s criminal code and carries a sentence of up to 20 years’ imprisonment.  The FSB like such ‘spying’ charges as the entire ‘trial’ takes place behind closed doors with the sentences on such charges effectively guaranteed.  The secrecy makes it possible for conceal inconvenient details like the fact that the person supposed to have only just been ‘detained’ was abducted two years ago. 

Here the FSB reported that the unnamed 23-year-old (b. 2001) had “established contact with members of the SBU and that, on instructions from her ‘handler’, she gathered information which she sent via Messenger regarding the deployment of Russian military in Kherson oblast”.

Although everything suggests that the person whom the FSB do not name is Hanna Yeltsova, there is an oddity in the fact that Russia propaganda channels did show her in Russian captivity in December 2022. 

She had been abducted by Russian soldiers from her grandmother’s home in the village of Ahaimany (Kherson oblast) on 29 November 2022.  According to the Kherson publication Most, she was in her final year at Kherson State University, and was planning to work as a primary school teacher.  Her abduction was, in fact, first reported by the rector of her university.  Kherson itself had been liberated on 11 November 2022, with Hanna making her joy at this very clear on her social media page. 

According to the Centre for Journalist Investigations, it was a local collaborator, Halyna Kostenko, who is believed to have set the Russians on to the young Ukrainian. 

Hanna was able to make very brief contact with her family in December 2022, with Most suggesting that the price she may have paid for this was a ‘repentance’ video for Russian propaganda media shown at the end of December 2022, after a month in Russian captivity.  In fact, the Russians have various means of forcing Ukrainians to provide such ‘videoed confessions’ with the most common being torture.  We know from countless other victims that the person is forced to learn such a ‘confession’ off by heart, and is threatened, if they do not cooperate, with an immediate return to torture methods that typically include electric currents being attached to the most sensitive parts of the body, beatings, mock executions, and others.

In that ‘confession’, the young woman is shown saying that she considers her alleged actions to be mistaken, and that she admits that they could have led to people’s deaths.  In talking about representatives of an invading army, she said, almost certainly under duress, that “they are also someone’s children, someone’s husbands, fathers, I could have killed them”.

The death in Russian captivity of 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna whom the Russians had also abducted from occupied territory has highlighted the terrible danger that all civilian hostages face in Russian captivity.  Russia’s abduction and imprisonment of Hanna Yeltsova, or any other Ukrainian civilians, as well as any planned ‘trial’ under Russian legislation, are entirely illegal regardless of the aggressor state’s allegations.  Any Ukrainian holding their country dear would be acting as Ukrainian patriots by providing information about the invading army’s movements.  In fact, however, the appearance of a videoed ‘confession’ in December 2022, and the almost two years in which a very young woman was held prisoner, probably in Crimea, without any procedural status or contact with her family, make it likely that Hanna was targeted purely for her pro-Ukrainian views. After two years of torment, Russia is now opting for its default option, namely disturbingly secretive ‘spying’ charges.