When Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna’s body was returned from Russian captivity with organs missing to hide evidence of torture, the revelation sent shockwaves around the world.
Roshchyna died in Russian captivity in the fall of 2024, but her body was only returned to Ukraine in February and officially identified in April.
She was among 16,000 Ukrainian civilians held captive by Russia, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The Geneva Conventions set strict limits on the detention of civilians during wartime and establish clear standards for their humane treatment. Yet, the Ukrainians who have been freed from Russian captivity recount enduring daily beatings, torture, starvation, and denial of proper medical care at the hands of Russian authorities.
“We know of more than 180 prisons in Russia and the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine where our POWs (prisoners of war) and civilians are being kept,” Petro Yatsenko, spokesperson for the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, told the Kyiv Independent.
“Russian authorities can target anyone (in the occupied territories) no matter their gender, age, or profession.”
The fate of thousands of Ukrainians currently in captivity, as well as those living under occupation, remains uncertain amid U.S.-led efforts to end Russia’s war.
According to a leaked draft published by Reuters, the proposal of a peace deal backed by Ukraine and Europe envisions the release of all POWs, captive civilians, and illegally deported children by Russia.
However, the leaked draft backed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration includes no mention of any prisoner exchange or release of the kind.
Trump’s plan further reportedly proposes the de facto recognition of Russian occupation of parts of four Ukrainian regions and the de jure recognition of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea.
For Ukrainians under occupation, that means a continued risk of facing persecution, torture, and death.
“One of the most terrible things that war brings is separation... We cannot leave any of our people, any towns and villages under Russian occupation,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in July 2023.
“Wherever the Russian occupation continues, violence and humiliation of people reign.”
Opposing occupation
Ukrainians who oppose the Russian occupation of their land often end up in Russian captivity, alongside journalists, activists and volunteers.
Anna Yeltsova was a 19-year-old student in her final year of studies in Kherson when Russia captured the city shortly after launching its full-scale invasion in 2022.
Russia’s heavy armored vehicles didn’t scare Yeltsova, and she continued to rally support for Ukraine’s military on social media even under occupation.
“I have never for a moment doubted her strength of spirit,” Veronika Denysenko, one of Yeltsova’s former professors at Kherson State University, told the Kyiv Independent.
As a university student specializing in primary education, patriotism played a major role in Yeltsova’s pedagogical development. She approached tasks such as reciting poems, singing Ukrainian songs, and staging folk tales “with both enthusiasm and creativity,” according to Denysenko.
Russian occupation forces came to Yeltsova’s student dormitory with an ultimatum in the summer of 2022: cooperate with the occupiers or face eviction, Yeltsova’s aunt told the Ukrainian TV show “Finding Our Own.”
Yeltsova relocated from the city to her family home in the village of Balashove on the east bank of the Dnipro River.
“In the chaotic weeks that followed, we — her professors — tried to keep track of our students through Zoom, Viber, Telegram, Instagram,” Denysenko said.
“It was clear that Anya was taking extraordinary risks by continuing to post patriotic poetry and declarations of loyalty to Ukraine on her social media (while still being under occupation).”
During a visit to her grandmother in the nearby village of Ahaimany, where she planned to finish her coursework, the Russians found her.
The final post Yeltsova shared on Instagram before her abduction was a tribute to Ukraine’s liberation of the city of Kherson.
“You’re home, dearest!” Yeltsova proclaimed from the Russian-occupied part of Kherson Oblast on Nov. 11, 2022, accompanying the text with a video of locals raising the Ukrainian flag in Kherson’s city center.
As Yeltsova’s aunt told “Finding Our Own,” Russian occupation authorities arrived in two cars outside her grandmother's house and they claimed during questioning to have found evidence on Yeltsova’s phone that she had donated to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“I love my country,” she said according to her aunt. The Center for Journalistic Investigations reported in April 2023 that Halyna Kostenko, the head of Ahaimany, gave up Yeltsova to Russian authorities.
“From (watching footage of her on Russian state media), it became clear that they were breaking her, and it was impossible to help her.”
The General Prosecutor’s Office announced in November 2024 that Kostenko is suspected of collaborating with Russian authorities during the occupation.
After being taken away with a bag over her head from Ahaimany, Yeltsova was held in the Pre-Trial Detention Center No. 2 in Simferopol, a city in occupied Crimea. Her parents initially struggled to track down where Russian forces had taken her, according to her aunt.
In December 2022, Russian state media RIA Novosti released a video featuring Yeltsova, who is described as "a resident of Kherson Oblast." The caption reads that she was apprehended for allegedly providing Russian military coordinates to Ukrainian authorities, a charge that could result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
A downcast Yeltsova says on the verge of tears in the video that she “regrets” what they accused her of doing.
While Yeltsova continued to post pro-Ukrainian content online from Russian-occupied territory, such as calling for support for Ukraine’s military, Russian authorities did not present any evidence in court to prove that she was actually guilty of espionage.
“From (watching footage of her on Russian state media), it became clear that they were breaking her, and it was impossible to help her. In that video, she was hardly recognizable, only her eyes were the same…” Denysenko said.
“As a mother, I cried bitterly (when I learned of her abduction) and to this day, I worry deeply for her fate and pray for her.”
While tried in a court in Russian-occupied Chonhar in Kherson Oblast, Yeltsova was sentenced in February 2025 to 10 years in a penal colony.
Confession under torture
Fabricated criminal cases are a common tool used by the Russian occupation authorities to instill fear in the general population and make examples out of those who oppose the occupation.
However, even the Ukrainians who are not openly resisting the occupation can become a target.
That’s what happened to 26-year-old Iryna Navalna. After fleeing the siege of Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, with her mother in May 2022, Navalna decided later that August — against her mother’s wishes — to temporarily return to the already occupied city to collect her belongings and spend time with her elderly grandmother who had refused to leave.
During that trip, Navalna was arrested by Russian occupation forces and accused of plotting to bomb a government building during the Kremlin’s staged referendum to illegally annex Donetsk and three other Ukrainian oblasts.
"(The police in Russian-occupied Mariupol) sat me down on a chair and started hitting me on the head, on the legs — they shocked my thigh with a stun gun."
Navalna was sentenced on Oct. 7, 2024 to eight years in prison by a court in Rostov-on-Don on terrorism charges. Russian authorities relied on witness testimonies to “prove” that she actually took part in plotting to commit a terrorist act, plus Navalna’s own “confession,” which she latertold the court was made under torture.
“(The police in Russian-occupied Mariupol) sat me down on a chair and started hitting me on the head, on the legs — they shocked my thigh with a stun gun. They told me I wouldn't be released immediately, but if I confessed, I’d be in a prisoner exchange with Ukraine sooner and could go home to my mom,” Navalna told a court in Russia’s Rostov-on-Don in the summer of 2024.
“They said they knew where my mother and grandmother lived. In the end, I agreed to falsely confess in order to protect my life and the lives of my loved ones.”
Russian state-controlled media has claimed that Navalna acted on the orders of Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU) and was promised Hr 100,000 ($2,400) to plant an explosive device — a claim that Navalna has repeatedly denied.
Navalna, as well as members of her family, have gone on record saying that several factors likely contributed to her becoming a target of the Russian occupation authorities after her return to Mariupol — among them, her stepfather being a Ukrainian soldier who took part in the defense of Azovstal, an internship at the local police station prior to the full-scale invasion, and, of course, her last name.
“They mocked her and fixated on the name: ‘Ah, Navalna — what are you, (late Russian opposition leader Alexei) Navalny’s illegitimate daughter or something?’ They lined her up against a wall and held a gun to her head,” Oleksandra Stolyar, Navalna’s mother, told the independent Russian outlet Mediazona in October, recalling their ordeal at a Russian filtration camp after they fled Mariupol.
In a Facebook post from early 2023, Russian journalist and human rights advocate Olga Romanova shared information from recently freed Ukrainian female prisoners of war who had encountered Navalna at the pre-trial detention center in occupied Donetsk, shedding light on Navalna’s condition.
“The female POWs met Ira frightened and badly beaten, covered in deep bruises. She said she was beaten during interrogations, and the guards beat her too. Just because they can,” Romanova wrote.
Twenty-one women, including Navalna, were confined to a cell designed for just 10 people, according to the POWs. They slept two to a bed, and from wake-up to lights out — 16 hours in total — sitting was forbidden. Anyone caught sitting meant all of them women were dragged into the corridor and brutally beaten.
The Geneva Conventions stipulate that civilians in wartime captivity must be safeguarded not only from violence and persecution but also exploitation. However, Navalna is one of the many Ukrainians who have been forced into participating in Russian propaganda videos that are meant not only to brainwash the Russian public but to humiliate and intimidate Ukrainian prisoners.
In 2023, Russian state media NTV aired the propaganda film titled "I Am Zelensky’s Scum: Ladies Who Bring Death Betray Their Leader” featuring Navalna and other women accused by the Russian state of committing terrorist acts on behalf of Ukraine.
It is clearly visible in the scenes featuring Navalna that her imprisonment has taken a physical and psychological toll on her. The scornful voiceover, set against dramatic background music, refers to her as "the future terrorist," twisting her words about her upbringing in an attempt to portray her as a mentally unstable young woman and therefore somehow a "prime candidate" for recruitment by Ukrainian security services.
People, not land
Discussions about Ukraine’s occupied territories often wrongly assume that the Ukrainians who remain there are loyal to Russia. In truth, many Ukrainians find themselves under occupation for personal reasons — in Navalna’s case, to be with her grandmother — and it doesn’t mean they support Russian rule.
False narratives about Ukrainians in occupied territories — frequently peddled by pro-Russian propagandists — have now also been amplified by a top U.S. official.
"(Ukraine’s occupied regions) are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule," Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff told American right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson in March. Witkoff has met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on several occasions as part of Washington’s peace effort.
Ukraine has been pushing for any peace plan to include not only the release of POWs and the return of tens of thousands of children abducted by Russia, but also the release of civilians in Russian captivity, as tens of thousands of innocent people could otherwise face long-term suffering and abuse, with no clear path to returning home — especially those indicted by Russian courts on fabricated criminal charges.
The return of Ukrainians from Russian captivity remains a multinational effort, but Ukrainian authorities acknowledge that the absence of strong U.S. support, particularly in the context of the ongoing push for peace, could further complicate the situation.
"It is basements, torture, electric shock, rape with rubber truncheons.”
“Of course, we face more challenges now, such as when the U.S. ceased its (financial) support of very important programs to look for (Ukrainian) children kidnapped by Russia,” Yatsenko said.
At the same time, Russia is employing a range of obstructive tactics to evade accountability for the wellbeing of the thousands of civilians in Ukrainian captivity.
“Conditions in Russian places of detention cannot be checked by international humanitarian organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross,” Yatsenko explained.
“Unfortunately, the Russians have still not created special camps for prisoners where their rights are guaranteed, as dictated by the Geneva Conventions.”
The frustration felt by many Ukrainians over the absence of a strong, unequivocal response from the U.S. to Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territories and the brutal treatment of prisoners is deepened by the testimonies of those who have endured these abuses firsthand, such as Stanislav Aseyev, a journalist who spent nearly three years in the infamous Izolyatsia prison in Russian-occupied Donetsk in 2017-2019.
“Occupied Crimea is not Alsace and Lorraine, which we can talk about later. It is basements, torture, electric shock, rape with rubber truncheons,” Aseyev wrote on X on April 23.
“Throw away your calculator and remember that we are not just talking about square kilometers, but about people.”
Note from the author:
Hey there, it's Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading my latest interview. This was honestly one of the most difficult articles for me to write as I couldn't stop thinking for days afterward about Anna Yeltsova and Iryna Navalna. What is happening to Ukrainian civilians in Russian prisons is the stuff of nightmares, and the situation will only get worse if Russia isn't stopped. While this was a difficult read, I hope it made you understand how dire the situation truly is. It you appreciate reading about this sort of thing, please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent.
Danylo Mokryk
