Over two years after journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska was seized in occupied Melitopol, Russia has not brought any charges against her nor is it even admitting to holding her prisoner. The secrecy is particularly disturbing since it appears that Hlukhovska was, or continues to be, held at the same prison in Perm oblast where 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna was taken just days before her death and where 63-year-old Dniprorudne Mayor Yevhen Matvyeyev was effectively beaten to death.
Anastasia Hlukhovska (b. 1993) was one of at least six Melitopol journalists and / or administrators of the independent Telegram channels RIA-Melitopol and Melitopol is Ukraine who were seized by the Russians in raids early on 20 August 2023, or soon afterwards. Although she has been held incommunicado since that day, she was shown being taken away in handcuffs, and forced by Russians, one of whom seems to gratuitously grope her body, into a van in the propaganda videos from October 2023.
It is Russia’s undeniable role in her seizure that day, and the evidence from witnesses who saw her in Russian captivity, that make official denials now seem so sinister. While it is probably true that all of the journalists and Telegram administrators were held incommunicado for a long time, Russia has come up with fabricated charges against most of the others. Four of them: Mark Kaliush; Heorhiy Levchenko; Vladyslav Hershon; and Yana Suvorova have received long sentences while the ‘trials’ are now underway of two other men: Denys Hlushchenko and Oleksandr Malyshev, as well, seemingly, as of Maksym Rupchev.
According to the Chief Editor of RIA-South, Anastasia Hlukhovska and Heohiy Levchenko were the last two journalists of the publication remaining in occupied Melitopol. Both were seized at the same time, with Levchenko sentenced to 16 years on the grotesque charges first mentioned in the propaganda media reports in October 2023. It is quite unclear why Russia has brought no official charges against Hlukhovska, except that the lack of any charges and official status makes it easier to hide the Ukrainian journalist.
Slidstvo.info has posted four of the Russian responses to official requests for information from a lawyer representing Hlukhovska. Russia’s FSB, which was, undoubtedly, involved in seizing the journalists denied any knowledge of Hlukhovska’s whereabouts. The so-called Investigative Committee for occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast went even further, denying that any proceedings had been initiated against the journalist, nor any ‘investigative measures’ carried out.
Slidstvo spoke with a former hostage who was held in the Melitopol basement which the Russians turned into a torture chamber when other hostages, including Nastya Hlukhovska and Yana Suvorova were brought in. She reports terrible screams, clearly from torture, and was told that Hlukhovska had been tortured with the use of electric currents. The report notes that there was effective confirmation of this in the fact that the hostage was asked if she had heart medication, used because of the huge strain on the heart caused by such torture.
Both Hlukhovska and Suvorova are known to have been taken from Melitopol to SIZO No. 2 in Taganrog, a remand prison which was, at the time, notorious for its torture of Ukrainian civilian hostages and POWs. It was probably there that Victoria Roshchyna became dangerously emaciated and received the injuries from torture that caused her death.
RIA-South first reported on 26 August 2025, citing Hlukhovska’s sister that the latter had been transferred from Taganrog to the same SIZO in Kizel where Vika Roshchyna died, just days after being taken there. Her sister knew only that Nastya had been at Kizel on 30 June 2025, and that the International Committee of the Red Cross had confirmed the fact of her imprisonment. Slidstvo also spoke with a former prisoner of war who heard Hlukhovska’s name called out, though he did not see her.
On 27 October 2023, after two months of silence, the FSB in occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast claimed to have “broken up the activities of three agent groups in Zaporizhzhia oblast”, with these supposedly coordinated by Ukraine’s Military Intelligence. By that stage, the FSB had claimed in a response to Hlukhovska’s relatives that she had not been arrested. While the FSB report did not mention names, it coincided, as is often the case, with a program on Russian propaganda television which shows Hlukhovska being taken away in handcuffs, and others clearly reciting ‘confessions and repentance’ under duress. The FSB claimed that the telegram channel RIA-Melitopol and Telegram chat Melitopol is Ukraine had been used for gathering intelligence and “for exerting psychological pressure” on people living under Russian occupation.
Russia has systematically crushed any independent media and has imposed an information blockade on any Ukrainian territory that has fallen under its occupation. The attack in Melitopol, and the persecution of so many journalists and Telegram administration were, doubtless, aimed at terrorizing the public in general. In their report on 27 October 2023, the FSB even state that ‘warnings’ have been issued to subscribers to RIA-Melitopol and Melitopol is Ukraine of criminal liability for passing on information to Ukraine “damaging Russia’s security”.
During the state propaganda channel’s program, which appeared on the same day as the FSB report, the journalists and administrators were accused of ‘public calls to terrorist attacks’; supposed ‘treason’ and ‘spying’ and threatened with 12 to 20 years’ imprisonment. Yana Suvorova, who was just 18 when seized, Mark Kaliush, a very young man earlier diagnosed with schizophrenia and journalist Heorhy Levchenko were shown providing the ‘confessions and repentance’ demanded of them and probably extracted earlier during the two months in which they were likely tortured and threatened while being held incommunicado, without lawyers.
In July 2025, the Southern District Military Court ordered ‘mandatory psychiatric treatment’ in the case of 28-year-old Mark Kaliush. The word ‘treatment’ is as misleading now as it was during the Soviet period of punitive psychiatry. The conditions are likely to be appalling, and such a sentence potentially leading to him being held indefinitely. This, thankfully, proved not to be the case, with Kaliush released in a prisoner exchange a couple of months after the sentence.
In the space of two days, journalists Heorhy Levchenko on 2 September 2025 and Vladyslav Hershon on 3 September were sentenced to 16 and 15 years’ imprisonment, respectively. Both sentences are for maximum-security imprisonment, and are considerably harsher than the sentences Russian courts pass against murderers and other real criminals.
On 23 October 2025, just days after Yana Suvorova’s 21st birthday, she was sentenced by ‘judge’ Timur Khabaovich Mashukov from Russia’s Southern District Military Court to 14 years. It was claimed that “between 12 October and 27 December 2022, Ukraine’s Military Intelligence had drawn Suvorova into what they termed “a terrorist organization”. Supposedly, in order to gather information about Russian military and enforcement officials, she had become a moderator for a Telegram channel, Telegram bot for feedback and chat-bot, purportedly “intended for passing on information about places of deployment of Russian armed forces personnel and and technology, as well as of Russian so-called law-enforcement’ officials. Although the prosecution tried to turn the two Telegram channels into some kind of spying hub, they did ‘accuse’ the Ukrainian administrator of editing posts and publishing ‘pro-Ukrainian content’.
The charges against Suvorova were under Article 205.4 § 2 of Russia’s criminal code (‘involvement in a terrorist organization’); Article 205 § 2a and c (planning a terrorist attack) and ‘spying’, under Article 276.
