In August 2023, Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers took Melitopol journalist Anastasiia Hlukhovska hostage. Russia has been holding her in illegal detention for over two years without pressing any charges.
Slidstvo.Info has obtained official letters from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation and the Federal Security Service stating that they did not detain Hlukhovska and allegedly do not know where she is. At the same time, Slidstvo.Info journalists managed to find a unique witness who knows in which Russian detention centre Hlukhovska is currently being held. This is a detention centre in Kizel, Perm Krai, where at least two Ukrainian prisoners have died — the mayor of Dniprorudne, Yevhen Matveyev, and journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna.
Slidstvo.Info also obtained exclusive testimony from a woman who was held together with Anastasiia Hlukhovska in a torture chamber in occupied Melitopol. She said that Hlukhovska was tortured there.
This is stated in the Slidstvo.Info investigation.
On 20 August 2023, officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) broke into the apartment of Melitopol journalist Anastasiia Hlukhovska and took her hostage. They also searched the apartment and took all information storage devices: a laptop, flash drives, and a phone. Since then, there has been no contact with Nastia.
“She is a workaholic, I would say, a highly productive journalist. She wrote about social issues and interviewed people. We talked about how the occupation began, and I immediately asked the journalists to leave. And everyone acted as they saw fit. Some editorial offices closed and decided not to write anything at all because it was dangerous for journalists. We decided to continue writing, but taking into account that it was dangerous. And then absolutely everyone left, except for two of our journalists who stayed there. They are Anastasiia [Hlukhovska] and Heorhii [Levchenko],” says Svitlana Zalizetska, editor-in-chief of RIA Pivden.
Svitlana Zalizetska, editor-in-chief of RIA Pivden
Two months after Hlukhovska’s arrest, Russian propagandists published a story about the arrest of Melitopol journalists and Telegram group administrators. Anastasiia Hlukhovska appears in this video: the occupiers filmed how they broke into her apartment, handcuffed her and took her out onto the street.
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- Screenshot from the propaganda story
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- Screenshot from the propaganda story
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- Screenshot from the propaganda story
On 27 October, the Russian FSB reported on its website that Melitopol ‘agents’ had been detained by special services. However, in an official letter dated 13 October, the FSB replied to Hlukhovska’s relatives that she had not been detained.
Letter from the FSB saying that they do not have information about Hlukhovska’s location
‘THEY TORTURED HER WITH ELECTRICITY. YOU COULD HEAR HER SCREAMING.’
At first, Anastasiia Hlukhovska was held in the basement of the Ruslan-Komplekt enterprise, which the occupiers had turned into a torture chamber. Slidstvo.Info journalists obtained exclusive testimony from sources about a woman who was held there with Nastia. She said that the captured journalist was tortured.
“I gave her medicine. She said that she was also tortured with electricity. You could hear her screams. When Nastia was brought to us, she was always lying down. And the guard would come and say, ‘Olena, please look after Nastia. If she’s not doing well, knock on the door.’ That’s what he asked,” says the witness.
Anastasiia Hlukhovska was later transferred to Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 in Taganrog. Little is known about the journalist’s stay there.
A friend of Anastasiia, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the woman had experienced weight fluctuations due to hormonal changes. Anastasiia also needed treatment for conjunctivitis, which had worsened due to poor hygiene conditions in the detention centre.
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- Anastasiia Hlukhovska, photo from social media
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- Anastasiia Hlukhovska, photo from social media
To find out where Hlukhovska was transferred after Taganrog, her lawyer sent letters to the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Volgograd region of Russia and the so-called ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’. They replied that Hlukhovska was not being held in places of detention in these territories.
‘I HEARD THE NAME NASTIA,’ — A WITNESS WHO HEARD HLUKHOVSKA IN THE KIZEL DETENTION CENTRE
Journalists from Slidstvo.Info managed to find a unique witness who knows where Anastasiia Hlukhovska was transferred to after Taganrog. This was Detention Centre No. 3 in Kizel, Perm Krai, Russian Federation. According to Slidstvo.Info’s sources in law enforcement, the journalist was transferred to this detention centre on 30 August 2024.
“They brought us to Kizel sometime in late November or early December. I fell ill. As soon as you woke up there, they played the [Russian] anthem. The anthem started playing, and for the first time in 28 years, I lost consciousness. Then they took me to the doctor and did a fluorography. It turned out that I had either pneumonia or bronchitis. They took me to the hospital for injections. I was standing there waiting for my turn and heard Nastia’s last name,” says former prisoner of war Yevhenii Sholudko.
Former prisoner of war Evhenii Sholudko
This is the only time he heard Anastasiia Hlukhovska in Kizel. However, he adds that screams were repeatedly heard from the women’s cells: “There were women on our floor because we heard women’s voices. They were also screaming, you could hear it.”
Yevhenii Sholudko also adds that there was a separate torture cell in the Kizel pre-trial detention centre — the so-called ‘rubber’ room.
“It’s a room made entirely of rubber. No windows, nothing. Just rubber walls, no sink, no toilet, nothing. And you’re naked in there. Completely naked, they undress you. And you just stand there naked in the cell. If you wanted to use the toilet, you went in the corner. You sleep where you walk. The guys were screaming there, they were locked up there one by one — either they didn’t want to sing the anthem, or they saw somewhere that he was just opening his mouth and not singing. So he was in the ‘rubber’ room for two days, singing the anthem all day long,” says Yevhenii.
AFTER MORE THAN TWO YEARS IN PRISON, RUSSIA HAS STILL NOT BROUGHT CHARGES AGAINST HLUKHOVSKA
The international organisation Reporters Without Borders sent inquiries to the detention centre in Kizel, the Russian Ministry of Defence and the Federal Penitentiary Service asking where Anastasiia was being held. However, it received no response from any of these institutions.
“Anastasiia Hlukhovska is being held incommunicado (a status where the fact of detention is not acknowledged and no charges are brought, ed.). This means that we do not know where she is or what her situation is. And Russia has never confirmed that she is imprisoned there,” says Pauline Moffret, representative of Reporters Without Borders in Ukraine.
Poline Mofre, representative of Reporters Without Borders
Slidstvo.Info has a letter from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which essentially means that in two years of captivity, no official charges have been brought against Hlukhovska.
“No procedural checks were carried out on A.E. Hlukhovska, no criminal cases were opened, and she was not detained by investigators,” reads the official response from the Russian Investigative Committee.
Response from the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation
Since journalist Hlukhovska has not been charged with anything but is being illegally held in prison, her family has had virtually no information about her for more than two years.
At the same time, other civilians from Melitopol who were detained at the same time as Hlukhovska are being tried. A month ago, a Russian court sentenced Hlukhovska’s colleague Heorhii Levchenko to 16 years in prison for ‘public calls for extremist activity.’ A prison sentence was also handed down to the administrator of the Telegram channel ‘Melitopol is Ukraine,’ Vladyslav Hershon, who was detained on the same day as Heorhii and Anastasiia. A court in Rostov-on-Don sentenced Hershon to 15 years for espionage.
“When there is a case, it means that the court is monitoring the situation, and we can even check this information online: when the trial will take place, whether it will take place, what cases are involved, what the decision will be, and so on. But when there is incommunicado detention, there is nothing,” explains Pauline Moffret, a representative of the international organisation Reporters Without Borders.
In the Kizel detention centre, where Anastasiia Hlukhovska is being held, at least two deaths of Ukrainian prisoners have already been confirmed: the mayor of Dniprorudne, Yevhen Matveyev, who died as a result of a fatal beating during “admission” (transl. — “priyomka”, a procedure of admitting the prisoners into a detention institution), and journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna.
Earlier, Slidstvo.Info, in the film “Vika’s Last Assignment” traced Roshchyna’s path, learned about the conditions of her detention in a Russian prison, and obtained testimony from those who saw the Ukrainian journalist and communicated with her.
