Transfer to prison instead of prisoner exchange: civilian captives from occupied Luhansk are being taken to Russia

“Everything is very difficult, but I’m holding on and keeping my chin up. Hugs to all of you. I believe that we will see each other again. As Schopenhauer said 300 years ago, everything will happen one way or another”, wrote Oleksandr Borysov, a resident of Luhansk, in his first letter to his family after being conveyed to prison. December 24, 2024. Yakutsk, Russia.

Borysov is one of several dozen civilians who were seized in the occupied part of Luhansk region before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and have remained imprisoned ever since. At the end of 2024, Russian authorities began transferring them to Russia. Oleksandr was among the first to be transferred.

“We didn’t make it”

Oleksandr Borysov, now 40 years old, lived in Kadiivka (formerly Stakhanov) in Luhansk rlast, making a living through private transportation services. In 2014, after Russian forces seized the town, he fled to Kharkiv. However, soon after he had to return: in 2015, his father lost a leg due to shelling, his mother fell gravely ill and never recovered, and his family remained responsible for the care of his elderly grandparents.

Under occupation, Borysov continued providing transportation services. According to his relative, Nataliya Barchyshak, he delivered parcels from relatives in Ukraine-controlled territories to locals, and helped people flee, including those at risk of persecution.

Nataliya Barchyshak holds a photograph of Oleksandr Borysov at a demonstration in Kyiv organized by families of the captives. Photo from Nataliya Barchyshak’s personal archive

Borysov was detained on Christmas Eve in 2021. He had been sitting in his car near his home, waiting for his wife as they were to visit friends. Around the same time his brother Ihor was kidnapped in another part of Kadiivka, when he stopped at a red light on his way home from work.

While Ihor was released after three months, Oleksandr remained in captivity. He was tortured and threatened with violence against his father, brother and wife. To put an end to the abuse and protect his loved ones, he attempted to take his own life, recounts Nataliya Barchyshak.

Oleksandr Borysov was “sentenced” to 14 years in a penal colony for “high treason” – a charge commonly used against political prisoners in the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic. After years in captivity, his wife divorced him, and his brother cut off all contact.

Oleksandr Borysov is a natural leader. Energetic and proactive, he constantly wrote appeals and complaints, forcing inspections of the prison. That’s how human rights defender and veteran Maksym Butkevych, who was held captive in Luhansk region from June 2022 until October 18, 2024, remembers him.

After the “trial”, Butkevych was imprisoned in the same penal colony as Borysov and, perhaps, the majority of male “political” prisoners. “He explored every possible legal avenue for release under Russian law. Perhaps he hoped that if he became enough of a nuisance, they would eventually let him go,” recalls Butkevych.

Maksym Butkevych speaks at a UN Security Council meeting following his release from captivity. Photo by the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War

According to Nataliya Barchyshak, Oleksandr Borysov remains one of those who still adamantly refuse to accept Russian citizenship, which is imposed by Russia using coercion. Some prisoners, however, regardless of their political beliefs and aspirations, ultimately give in hoping for release on parole. After six or seven years behind bars, many have lost hope of being included in a prisoner exchange. For many, there is simply no one left to fight for their freedom.

Anna Slastnikova, the sister of businessman Roman Sahaidak, who was detained in 2017, believed, same as Nataliya Barchyshak would do later, that public attention could help secure her brother’s release. Today, she feels that Ukrainian authorities have little concern for his fate, simply because he is a civilian and not a prisoner of war.

Roman was “sentenced” to 11 years in prison, and he is now in his eighth year behind bars. Unlike most political prisoners, he is being held in Colony No. 38 in Dovzhansk (formerly Sverdlovsk).

“For so long, I held onto hope for a prisoner exchange,” Anna Slastnikova says, barely holding back tears. “I followed every single exchange. My God, I couldn’t tear myself away from the TV. I just sat there, waiting for a call. It was unbearable. Every time, I looked at the faces, thinking – maybe they just couldn’t reach us. I did everything I could to get him on those lists. Before every exchange, whenever there was even a discussion about one, I wrote to Denisova, to the ombudsmen who followed her, to the Security Service, to the Red Cross, to human rights organizations. It didn’t work. We didn’t make it”.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, civilian prisoner exchanges have almost stopped. Only one civilian detainee – Iryna Chyzhevska – from the occupied Luhansk region, who was imprisoned before 2022, has been released.

Prisoners exchanged on September 13, 2024, including Iryna Chyzhevska Photo from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s official Telegram channel

A legal absurdity

According to Maksym Butkevych, around twenty political prisoners who were detained before February 2022 remain in captivity in the occupied Luhansk region. The fate of some of them, like 55-year-old Vadym Dryeyev, who suffers from severe illness, is unknown, even to their own families. Dryeyev was imprisoned in April 2019, despite claims by Luhansk’s so-called “information agency” that he “did not understand his own actions due to a mental disorder.” He was accused of planting explosives near monuments in Luhansk, allegedly acting on orders from Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) as part of a sabotage campaign.

Vadym Dryeyev during an “investigative experiment” conducted by the so-called “Ministry of State Security” of the Luhansk “republic.” Screenshot from a Russian mass media video

Being convicted under a “political” charge does not mean that the accused truly held pro-Ukrainian views or had any connection to Ukrainian intelligence, despite the claims of occupation “prosecutors” and “judges.” Many so-called “political” prisoners once held pro-Russian views, but later changed their stance, either after years of fighting against Ukraine or after imprisonment.

One such case is 55-year-old Oleksandr Divako from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, whose story is recounted by Maksym Butkevych. Divakov had worked in Russia before returning to Ukraine in 2014. Initially, he traveled to Luhansk to deliver humanitarian aid but soon joined a separatist battalion, rising to the position of an intelligence commander. However, he quickly became disillusioned with the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic and the Russian propaganda he had once trusted. When the militants suffered repeated failures on the battlefield and needed a scapegoat, Divakov – being from a Ukrainian government-controlled region – was “exposed” as an alleged SBU agent and “sentenced” to 14 years in prison.

Despite everything, Divakov remains among the older political prisoners who still hope to be exchanged for Russian captives. His health has severely deteriorated in detention, Butkevych says.

Oleksandr Divakov during his so-called “trial.” Photo: Luhansk’s occupation “nformation agency”

Many so-called “political prisoners” ended up behind bars simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some of them, even in captivity, still hold pro-Russian views. One such case involves a woman whom the occupation authorities falsely linked to a 16-member sabotage group accused of assassinating Oleh Anashchenko, a colonel in the so-called “People’s Militia,” in February 2017. Despite her imprisonment, she remains supportive of Russia, her only “crime” was providing medical assistance to another alleged “saboteur.” Former prisoner Iryna Chyzhevska, a neurologist who was also detained in occupied Luhansk, shared her story with the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR). Chyzhevska had remained in the occupied region to care for her ailing parents. In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the hospital where she worked was repurposed to treat coronavirus patients.

The hospital where Iryna Chyzhevska worked was severely under-equipped -an outdated facility that primarily treated impoverished and elderly/ Meanwhile, the “elite:, including Russian military personnel, were sent to the regional hospital, which was far better suited for proper medical care. Under these dire conditions, mortality rates soared. Doctors were powerless to prevent deaths due to a lack of proper equipment and medicine. Many of them fell ill themselves, and at least one doctor died from the strain

One of the medical staff eventually complained to the “authorities” about the situation in the hospital. The response was a crackdown on the hospital’s administration. In March 2021, Chyzhevska was arrested on her way to work.

The charges against her changed several times. She was beaten, threatened, and pressured into confessing to passing lists of COVID-19 patients to the Health Department of Luhansk Regional State Administration, where she had worked before 2014. Later, she was accused of leaking information to a relative in Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).

“They used every method of intimidation possible,” Chyzhevska later recalled in an interview with MIHR researcher Lidiya Tarash.

They told me that if I refused to sign a confession stating that I had handed over lists of COVID-19 patients to the enemy, they wouldn’t keep me in the basement. Instead, they would send me to a pre-trial detention center, into a cell with criminal offenders whose husbands or brothers were fighting in the war. These women, they said, would beat and rape me every day. They constantly repeated: “We can do anything. We don’t care whether you’ are guilty or not.”

According to Iryna Chyzhevska, she ultimately signed everything they demanded after they threatened to take her ailing mother and torture her.

Roman Sahaidak is yet another individual who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. A jeweler and gemologist, he worked with precious metals and gemstones. After the occupation of his hometown Sorokyne (formerly Krasnodon), his business partner proposed buying out Sahaidak’s share of their enterprise. When he refused, his partner leveraged connections within the so-called Ministry of State Security of the Luhansk People’s Republic to take over the business, sending Sahaidak to prison in the process.

Sahaidak has been in captivity since July 2017, enduring torture. In an effort to force a confession, the occupiers twice abducted his father: once immediately after Roman’s own abduction in 2017, and again shortly before his sham “trial” in 2018. On both occasions, the older man was held for a month in the basement of the so-called Ministry of State Security (MGB), without interrogation, without physical abuse, but also without any contact with his family. This account was shared with MIHR by Anna Slastnikova.

Roman Sahaidak. Photo from Anna Slastnikova’s personal archive

Roman Sahaidak was sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of “high treason,” with the confiscation of his property. In 2024, his case was reviewed under the Russian Criminal Code: while his 11-year sentence remained unchanged, the confiscation order was lifted. However, a significant portion of his property – five vehicles – had already disappeared without a trace.

“I was curious to see how they would review the sentences of those convicted of “treason.” “How could Ukrainian citizens, living on Ukrainian territory, with no connection to Russia, possibly betray Russia? It turns out, it’s quite simple – just renumber the articles in the criminal code. The fact that this is a legal absurdity did not seem to bother anyone,” human rights advocate Maksym Butkevych told MIHR.

A transfer before the transfer

Kostiantyn Zhyrkov struggles to maintain contact with his brother, Anton Hryhorov, who was abducted by Russian-controlled Luhansk militants in March 2019 and sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of “espionage.” Before his arrest, Anton had been dismissed from his job at a university, where he headed the social services department. Someone had reported him after discovering a photo of him on the Maidan with a Ukrainian flag in the background.

For nearly six years, Kostiantyn has been fighting for his brother’s release, appealing to Ukrainian authorities, international organizations, and foreign officials. The response has remained the same: his name is on the exchange lists, but Russians refuse to confirm his detention or disclose his whereabouts.

“Anton and the others detained with him are asking for urgent appeals to be made everywhere, as there are plans to transfer their colony somewhere further north. They have been told this could happen as early as March,” says Kostiantyn Zhyrkov

Like Oleksandr Borysov and Maksym Butkevych before him, Anton Hryhorov is being held in Penal Colony No. 19 near Khrustalnyi (formerly known as Krasnyi Luch).

Anton Hryhorov, photo from the personal archive of Kostiantyn Zhyrkov

“When I was still there, for several months, rumors circulated that we would all be transferred to Russia and that the colony would be shut down,” recalls Maksym Butkevych. The facility was clearly built for a larger prison population, but since many local convicts are now being sent to fight in the war, the number of inmates has decreased. Then there were rumors that only “political” prisoners and prisoners of war would be relocated or just the “political” ones. And with the “political” prisoners, this has started to come true.”

According to a former detainee, the transfer of prisoners of war to Russia began even earlier from another colony in Luhansk region, Colony No. 36 in Sukhodilsk, specifically those who had not yet been “convicted.”

As for Colony No. 19, recent renovations have taken place, and local staff are being replaced with Russian personnel. These developments, according to Maksym Butkevych, suggest that the facility is not being shut down.

Natalia Barchyshak believes that Ukrainian detainees are being transferred to prevent them from communicating and supporting one another. Available information indicates that those who have already been relocated, or are awaiting transfer, are being sent to different regions across Russia, ranging from the north to the central parts of the country, including Khanty-Mansiysk, Yakutsk, Omsk, and Perm. In other words, Ukrainian prisoners are being sent far from home.

All former detainees and relatives of those still in captivity, interviewed by the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), confirm that prisoners struggle to survive without humanitarian aid packages. However, no one can imagine how or what could be sent to places as remote as Omsk or, even more so, Yakutsk. Nearly all prisoners known to MIHR suffer from health issues, with many conditions resulting from torture. The medications that have helped them endure were provided by their families through care packages, not by prison medical units.

“The health of people coming from there is completely shattered,” explains Kostiantyn Zhyrkov. Last winter, the conditions were catastrophically cold. Everyone fell ill. Those without money or family nearby were left in unheated cells. Access to medication is severely restricted, and the food is barely fit for animals, if you don’t receive regular care packages, you have almost nothing.”

Many detainees who had no family or lost their relatives in the occupied territories relied on the support of the families of other prisoners. Captives supported one another, and their relatives did the same. Now, however, Russia is dismantling this network of mutual aid and solidarity that had developed in and around Luhansk over years of occupation.

This article was published with the support of the European Endowment for Democracy (EED). Its content does not necessarily reflect the official position of the EED. The views or opinions expressed herein are the sole responsibility of its authors.

Authored by Yuliya Abibok, the MIHR journalist