The FSB in occupied Crimea have announced the ‘arrests’ of a brother and sister who, judging by the scant information provided are almost certainly two of the four members of a single family abducted from Yevpatoria on 21 March 2025. The whereabouts of one of the others remains unknown.
Crimean Tribunal reported on 1 September 2026 that the brother and sister whom the FSB claim were spying for Ukraine’s Military Intelligence are probably Tetiana Maliar (b. 14 August 1968) and her brother Valentyn Maliar (b. 22 November 1974). The year of birth in each case corresponds, and Tetiana and Valentyn Maliar are indeed originally from Lviv, and moved to Crimea before Russia’s invasion and annexation, living in Molochne, a village outside Yevpatoria.
As reported, Tetiana and Valentyn Maliar were, in fact, seized back on 21 March 2025 together with Tetiana’s son, Anatoliy Rossikhin (b. 27 October 1986) and daughter Olha Behei (b. 1992). Although taken away after searches of their homes, the occupation enforcement bodies provided no information at all about their whereabouts for over a week and, scarcely anything even after that.
Such effective abductions which only turn into ‘arrests’ and criminal charges after months or years have become disturbingly common in occupied Crimea with the FSB reportedly even having a term for this – “defrosting”. Such periods where a person is held incommunicado, and not officially in custody, are typically used to extract ‘confessions’ through torture or other illegal forms of duress. In Tetiana Maliar’s case, her very imprisonment and near certain lack of healthcare, are alone tantamount to medical torture as she suffers from severe kidney insufficiency.
This is not the first time that the FSB have reported a person’s ‘arrest’ after holding them prisoner for well over a year. Crimean Process notes that it is less the fact that the family have been held for so long that makes the FSB’s ‘reported arrest’ seem rather curious, as that the Maliars have had official suspect status since at least last autumn. Tetiana Maliar, for example, was listed as facing charges of illegal possession of explosive substances. The situation, and likely sentence, have now become even more serious with the charges against both Tetiana and Valentyn Maliar not only under possession, circulation, etc. of explosives, but of ‘treason’, under Article 275 of Russia’s criminal code. There was, however, suggestion that all four family members were facing such ‘treason’ charges, and were held in SIZO No. 2, the remand prison opened soon after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. SIZO No. 2 is believed to be controlled by the FSB and appears to be used solely for holding political prisoners and hostages.
While ‘treason’ charges under Article 275, where a person has been forced to take Russian citizenship, or ‘spying’, under Article 276, have virtually become the default political charge laid against Ukrainians, ‘explosives’ and ‘weapons’ charges are also FSB favourites. This is, doubtless, because they are so easy to fabricate, with courts invariably ignoring even the most conclusive evidence that the allegations are untrue. In the persecution of Ukrainian journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko, for example, the ‘court’ disregarded proof that the grenade allegedly ‘found’ in a compartment in his car did not fit there.
According to the If there was no war project, Olha Behei was released by February 2026. While excellent that she has been freed, it is appalling that she was held in detention at all, as she has two fairly small children – Alisa who is 11 and 7-year-old Ruslan. It is not clear why the FSB have only belatedly reported the ‘arrests’ of Tetiana and Valentyn Maliar, and said nothing about the whereabouts of Tetiana’s son, Anatoliy Rossikhin.
Both family and friends believe that the Maliar family were likely targeted because they are originally from Lviv, in Western Ukraine.
