Russian FSB holds abducted 62-year-old Crimean woman incommunicado for almost four months without vital medication

Tamara Chernukha disappeared on 5 February 2025, with the Russian FSB and ‘police’ in occupied Crimea clearly knowing where the 62-year-old ambulance paramedic is, but refusing to say.  This appears to be the latest of many FSB ‘arrests’ that bear all the hallmarks of enforced disappearances, with Russia increasingly targeting women in Crimea and other occupied parts of Ukraine.   

It was the Association for the Reintegration of Crimea who first reported Chernukha’s disappearance on 24 May, calling it “the latest act of repression against Crimean civilians’  Tamara Chernukha (b. 1963) is from Chornomorske in Crimea and had worked for many years as an ambulance paramedic.

The 62-year-old Ukrainian disappeared on 5 February 2025 in Chornomorske.  Since her relatives and colleagues knew only that she had vanished, they called the occupation ‘police’ and asked them to check her apartment.  It was, seemingly, while the ‘police’ were doing this that they received a call ‘from above’ telling them to stop looking for Chernukha

All approaches to the occupation ‘prosecutor’, ‘police’ or FSB have resulted in the standard claim that Chernuka is not in any place of detention, and that no criminal proceedings have been initiated.

Tamara’s relatives have, however, learned through unofficial sources that she is being held in a SIZO, or remand prison, with the charge being of ‘state treason’.   Chernukha has serious health issues, and the conditions in any SIZO, when the family are not able to pass on food and medication, put her life and health in danger.  This is, indeed, as the Association notes, a form of torture in itself.  There are, however, other grounds for concern as the FSB are notorious for using such periods where a person’s arrest has not been formally registered and where they have no access to independent lawyers, to extract ‘confessions’ through other methods of torture. 

All of Russia’s ‘treason’ and ‘spying’ trials are shrouded in total secrecy.  Even where a person is, after being formally remanded in custody, allowed to see an independent lawyer, the latter will, on threat of criminal prosecution, be forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement.  It is very likely that both Ivan Yatskin, whose wife was expecting their third child, and Halyna Dovhopola from Sevastopol were targeted back in 2019 for their pro-Ukrainian position.  They were sentenced to 11 and 12 years, respectively, with their ‘trials’ taking place behind closed doors.  Halyna, who turned 70 on 27 March 2025, wrote in a letter from a Russian prison colony that “we are waiting here, and each of us is fighting for our life, so as to not “die in Russia” behind barbed wire. We ask you all not to forget about us!  Glory to Ukraine!”

There has been a massive increase in such abductions and in ‘spying’ and treason’ trials since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.  In occupied Crimea, it is sometimes hard to know whether the FSB are using such illegal ‘arrests’ to fabricate charges, or whether these are enforced disappearances like that of renowned Crimean Tatar activist Erwin Ibragimov who was abducted on 24 May 2016 by men in traffic police uniform and vanished without trace.   Three Crimean Tatar men -  22-year-old Fakhod Soliev and Server Aliev (33) disappeared in November 2023, 28-year-old Ismail Shemshedinov two months later, with the FSB known to have been behind Shemshedinov’s abduction, and believed to have been involved in the first two men’s disappearance.

Small wonder that, when four FSB officers forcibly abducted civic journalist and nurse Iryna Danilovych from a bus stop in Koktebel on 29 April 2022, she immediately suspected this to be an abduction.  Iryna was held incommunicado for well over a week, despite constant efforts by her lawyer to find out her whereabouts and speak with her.  The FSB used that period to try to break her into ‘confessing’ to non-existent contacts with foreign organizations and ‘state treason’.  When all such methods failed and publicity mounting about Iryna’s abduction, they claimed to have ‘found’ explosives in her glasses case (under Article 222.1 § 1 of Russia’s criminal code).  Despite the evident nonsense and failure to explain why Iryna would have carried explosives, together with her glasses, to and from her night shift, she was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. 

Leniye Umerova was seized in November 2022, while trying to enter Russia in order to travel to occupied Crimea where her father had been diagnosed with cancer.  She spent over five months under administrative arrest, on a range of absurd pretexts, before the FSB came up with ‘spying’ charges.  She was imprisoned for almost two years before being one of a very small number of political prisoners to have been released in a prisoner exchange.

Similar FSB tactics appear to have been used against 28-year-old Lera Dzhemilova, who was first seized and officially imprisoned for 15 days for ‘refusing a drug test’.  She was then taken to occupied Simferopol, with nothing known for around eight months, before it became clear that she was being charged with ‘treason’ (Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code).

The same charges have reportedly also been laid against Tetiana Diakunovska and 24-year-old Khatidzhe Buyukchan who was abducted in early May 2025.

See also:

Oksana Senedzhuk  Russia rubberstamps 15-year ‘treason’ sentence against 58-year-old Crimean activist Oksana Senedzhuk

Liudmyla Kolesnikova  Russian FSB abduct Ukrainian from her mother’s funeral in occupied Crimea

Nina Tymoshenko Russia’s most savage sentence yet against 66-year-old Ukrainian woman from occupied Crimea

Vladyslav Afanasiev  Crimean sentenced to 15 years for donation to rescue children from Russian-occupied territory

Ruslan Mambetov  Crimean Tatar sentenced to 18 years in Russian secret ‘trial’ where only torture is near certain

Roman Hryhorian  Ukrainian seized in Crimea and sentenced to 12 years for donations to Ukraine's defenders