It is almost four years since the Russians abducted Ukrainian lawyer Yevhen Ilchenko from outside his home in occupied Melitopol. He remains in captivity, although there is nothing to suggest that any charges have been laid. Yevhen Ilchenko was the first of a large number of Melitopol journalists or Telegram channel administrators seized by the invaders for their unconcealed pro-Ukrainian position and / or for writing honestly about life under Russian occupation.
RIA-South learned almost immediately of Ilchenko’s abduction on 10 July 2022. Three cars, one bearing the Russian ‘z’ symbol of its war of aggression against Ukraine, had driven up to his building when he stepped out to throw out rubbish. Men in black uniforms and balaclavas seized Ilchenko and forced him into one of the cars. They then burst into the apartment, locking Yevhen’s wife and daughter in one room, while they proceeded to carry out what RIA-South called their standard activity – robbery. They removed all computer technology; electronic clocks; telephones; Ukrainian SIM-carts; passports; and documents for the apartment.
The Memorial Support for Political Prisoners Project, which has declared Ilchenko a political prisoner, notes that in May 2022, Ilchenko had created a Telegram channel [«Милый Тополь»] where he wrote about what was happening in Melitopol under Russian occupation, making his strong opposition very clear. In one post, he wrote that he had learned of a “delegation”, including Russians with machine guns, who had gone around apartment blocks looking for empty apartments. He asked his readers to support their neighbours who had been forced to flee and do everything possible to stop the Russians from seizing their properties.
As is always the case, Ilchenko disappeared with the invaders claiming to know nothing of his whereabouts. It is now known that for the first weeks after his abduction, he was held in occupied Melitopol and regularly tortured.
it was during this period that his captors produced a surreal video for Russian TV in which they forced Ilchenko to ‘confess’ to having created a Telegram channel where he supposedly incited enmity between Russians and Ukrainians. RIA-South reported that you could see Yevhen shaking, he seemed to have turned grey and was clearly reading from a prompt. A part of this video was, apparently, posted by the Russian state-controlled RIA Novosti on 12 August 2022, just over a month after Ilchenko’s abduction. According to this ‘confession’, Ilchenko had posted material which “called on people to destroy and set people against those civilians who had from the outset taken the Russian side and who were trying to build a peaceful life here”. He had, purportedly, “denigrated the honour and dignity of the Russian armed forces, the military civilian administration and the city’s enforcement officials”; and had, of course, worked for Ukraine’s Security Service and Military Intelligence. Perhaps the Russians understood that this was all too much like legitimate protest against an invader, and threw in a couple of ordinary criminal charges, claiming involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering.
Such ‘videoed confessions’ have been a standard part of Russia’s political persecution of Ukrainians since 2014,. One of their main purposes is propaganda, with many of the most lurid or simply absurd elements later quietly dropped. We also known from political prisoners who have been released, or who have retracted such fake confessions and described the torture applied to obtain them that they can be forced to learn different versions of the ‘confession’ off by heart, and are punished for any word off track.
In this case, it is clear that there were no grounds for any of the apparent allegations given that, almost four years later, Yevhen Ilchenko has not been charged with any ‘crime’.
Ilchenko was then used for many more months as slave labour, being forced to dig trenches for the Russian invaders and to clean their weapons.
Memorial now believes him to be imprisoned at the SIZO [remand prison] in Taganrog, however there is no official confirmation of this or even, seemingly, of the fact of his imprisonment. Reporters without Borders recently issued a report, saying that, after speaking with former prisoners, it believes that both Yevhen Ilchenko and young Melitopol journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska, abducted in August 2023, are held prisoner at the SIZO in Kizel. This is the Siberian remand prison where two other abducted civilians, 27-year-old Ukrainian journalist Victoria Roshchyna and Dniprorudne Mayor Yevhen Matvieiev, died after torture.
Yevhen Ilchenko was clearly targeted because of his pro-Ukrainian position and Telegram channel. He was the first of at least nine journalists and / or Telegram administrators whom the Russians came off as part of their efforts to crush protest and any vestiges of freedom of speech on occupied territory.
Denys Hlushchenko, Oleksandr Malyshev
and Yana Suvorova; Vladyslav Hershon, Heorhiy Levchenko, Maksym Rupchov and Mark Kaliush.
Iryna Levchenko
