Abducted Kherson activist sentenced for ‘spying for Ukraine’ while in Russian captivity denied vital medical treatment

It is two and a half years since Iryna Horobtsova was abducted from her home in Kherson, with her Russian captors systematically refusing to provide medical treatment that she very clearly needs.  This is of particular concern given an earlier, potentially serious diagnosis and the likelihood that the 39-year-old Ukrainian was subjected to torture while held totally incommunicado.

Graty has published excerpts from a letter, dated 11 December 2024, which Iryna sent to her elder sister, Olena, from SIZO [remand prison] No. 1 in occupied Simferopol.  It is clear from her letter that the prison staff are not only failing to provide basic health care, but are even refusing to pass on medication sent by her family.

She writes of the acute headaches that have driven her crazy for the past two and a half years.  For a huge part of that time, she was held in total isolation, with no possibility of corresponding with her family and no access to any form of healthcare.  She could not even get ordinary painkillers for her headaches.  “It was some kind of horror as the migraines occur more frequently due to lack of sleep and nerves, and it was these that were happening regularly.”

There are serious grounds for concern.  Olena explains that her sister was diagnosed as suffering from a brain aneurysm before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  She needs constant monitoring and medical care.

Iryna writes that she had hoped that the Russians would at least allow her the minimal healthcare that other prisoners received once they admitted to holding her in custody and formally initiated proceedings.  This, however, never happened.

She explains that the special tablets that she had been dreaming of for two years and the sedatives she needs for her shattered nerves are only available on prescription, and the local doctors in the SIZO do not have the right to issue prescriptions.  They also don’t have any medication that they could issue to her at her request.  Nor can she receive the medication by parcel from her family, as she doesn’t have a prescription.  “And as well as that, the medical service very often refuse to receive the medication for me because of my article [i.e. the article of Russia’s criminal code – ‘spying’ - with which Horobtsova was illegally charged].

Iryna also writes that a day earlier, she had experienced acute chest pains for the first time and had been absolutely terrified.  She tried to call a prison paramedic but the latter simply ignored her.  She was doubled over with pain, had no idea what was happening, and got through it only thanks to the other women in her cell who gave her some corvalol [a tranquilizer widely used as heart medication]

Iryna Horobtsova is 39 and has been held prisoner since her 37th birthday on 13 May 2022, when armed and masked Russians burst into her home and took her away.  Iryna is an IT specialist who was working as a software tester in February 2022 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and seized control of Kherson.  Her company had, apparently, suggested that she work from abroad but she refused to leave Kherson and became very active as a volunteer.  From the first days of the invasion, she bought bandages, painkillers, etc. and took them to the local hospital to help the wounded.  She ignored the danger and drove medics to work in Kherson and the oblast, as well as delivering food and medicines to those in Kherson most in need.  She was open in expressing her opposition to the Russian invasion and took part in the mass protests in the centre of Kherson which ended only after the Russians began shooting at protesters and mounting a terror campaign. She wrote about the protests on social media, with her posts clearly demonstrating her pro-Ukrainian position and support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces.  

Like so many other Ukrainian civilians seized by the invaders, Iryna simply disappeared for some time.  Her family were, however, luckier than many in that they did at least receive confirmation that she was in Russian captivity.  In response to her father’s formal demand that the Russian FSB look for Iryna, the FSB wrote that there were no grounds for launching a search since Horobtsova was held in Simferopol.  At this stage, it was claimed only that she had “resisted the special operation and therefore, after the end of the special operation, the appropriate measures will be applied to her.”   This was Russia’s excuse for illegally holding civilians hostage, without any formal status and without criminal charges having n laid. 

In April 2023, Emil Kurbedinov reported that the FSB were not only preventing him from seeing Horobtsova, but were also refusing to provide any information about her.  They claimed that this was “to protect state secrets”. 

It became clear in March 2024 that the Russians were planning to put Iryna Horobtsova on ‘trial’ on absurd spying charges, under Article 276 of Russia’s criminal code.  According to the Russian prosecutor general’s report, Iryna was alleged to have, from February 2022 through March 2023, gathered and passed to an official of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence information about the places of deployment, time, routes and movement of units of the Russian Federation armed forces and Rosgvardia on the territory of Kherson oblast; the types of military technology and arms, linking this to local maps and geolocating coordinates. The information passed on could have been used to direct fire at places where the Russian armed forces were deployed.”

The wording has become standard and is copy-pasted from the ‘trial’ of one civilian hostage to another.  All of these judicial stunts are in violation of international law, but this time Russia resorted to particular depths of lawlessness.  They claimed that Iryna Horobtsova had ‘spied’ for her own country for almost ten months in which she was held captive by the aggressor state. 

This nonsense was supposedly put to the Russian occupation ‘Kherson regional court’ although the sentence, on 15 August, was reported by the occupation ‘Crimean prosecutor’, with Horobtsova sentenced to ten and a half years’ imprisonment.  She is now awaiting the appeal hearing against this shocking travesty.