Ukrainian woman dies in illegal Russian detention in Crimea
on Google
A Ukrainian woman from Kharkiv has died while being illegally detained in a Russian pretrial detention center in occupied Crimea, according to a Nov. 5 statement by a Kharkiv language school she co-founded.
Oleksandra Kazarovytska, who was 44 years old, had returned to occupied Sevastopol to help her parents sell their apartment, according to the statement of the Kharkiv language school where she served as director of studies. Her parents had planned to relocate to Turkey after selling their home.
Kazarovytska was born in Sevastopol, and her parents continued living in occupied Crimea after Russia illegally claimed to have annexed the peninsula in 2014.
According to the statement, Kazarovytska was illegally detained by Russian occupation authorities when, "correspondence with a volunteer from the very beginning of the full-scale invasion was found," on her phone.
She was then taken to pre-trail detention where she was held in solitary confinement, likely in occupied Simferopol.
According to Russian occupation authorities, Kazarovytska committed suicide on Oct. 25 after being held in solitary confinement for three months. She was buried in Sevastopol on Nov 4., the Russian occupation authorities claimed.
"It is impossible to imagine that a young, talented, bright person was so cruelly torn from life," her former colleagues said in their statement.
Two new Russian pretrial detention centers in occupied Crimea form part of a system in which Ukrainian civilians are held for months without formal charges, access to lawyers, or family contact, and detainees reported torture and abuse under the watch of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), an investigation by the Kyiv Independent revealed.
Former detainees told the Kyiv Independent that their relatives sometimes did not know whether their abducted loved ones were still alive.
Russia's Federal Penitentiary Service formally operates one of the facilities, Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 (SIZO No. 2) in Simferopol, but testimony gathered by the Kyiv Independent indicates the FSB has special access to it. The other facility, SIZO No. 8, officially came under FSB control in March 2026.
Russia turned the system of political persecution it had been building in Crimea since 2014 into a hub for the unlawful detention of Ukrainian civilians, primarily from Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts, after its full-scale invasion.
International humanitarian law does allow an occupying power to intern civilians it believes pose a security threat, but only under strict conditions. These include the right to appeal and regular reviews of the ruling, and confinement in designated internment facilities rather than ordinary pretrial detention centers or prisons.
In a September 2025 report, the U.N. Human Rights Office said it was not aware that Russia had established and applied such a procedure for those detained in occupied Ukraine.
Unlike prisoners of war, who are regularly returned through exchanges, civilians effectively remain without a functioning mechanism for their return. According to estimates by Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets, Russia unlawfully holds about 16,000 Ukrainian civilians in about 200 detention sites in Russia and occupied parts of Ukraine. Only a few hundred people have been brought back.
Meanwhile, Russia continues to expand the prison infrastructure of the occupied peninsula. Russian authorities plan to build another pretrial detention center in Crimea with space for 1,500 people by 2030.
