Despite all efforts to secure the release of journalist Iryna Levchenko and her husband Olexander, who were detained by Russians on May 6, 2023, in Melitopol, the couple remains in captivity. Moreover, their exact whereabouts, health condition, and reasons for imprisonment are still unknown. The publishing house Telegraf UA, where Iryna previously worked, is closely following this story and, exactly one year after the couple's arrest, in its publication, reminds how it unfolded.

Chairman of the Association Igor Kotelianets provided his comment to the publication. The full text of the publication can be read at the following link: https://cutt.ly/7ewxaAVn

After the occupation of Melitopol, Russians almost immediately began checks, detentions, and arrests of local residents. The longer the occupation lasted, the fewer reasons Russian law enforcement needed to visit Melitopol residents for searches or to stop and detain them directly on the streets. It was in this way that Iryna and Olexander Levchenko fell into their hands.

"When my daughter and I were getting ready to leave the occupied territory, Iryna and her husband were offered to join us," says Iryna's sister Elena Rudenko. "But she didn't want to and refused us. My sister was sure that they were not needed by anyone because they were only involved in household chores, going to the cottage, walking around the city, spending time with their granddaughter, and that's it. But it turned out differently. The last time we exchanged messages with Iryna was on the morning of May 6. It was only more than a week later that it became known that they were taken a few hours after we communicated. Acquaintances saw that they were "communicating" with Russian military personnel in one of the city's districts, and after that, Iryna and Sasha disappeared."

When it became clear that the Levchenko couple had been detained by Russians, their friends in the city tried to find out where exactly they were being held. However, they failed to obtain any information from the occupiers in the usual way. 

Only later did Olexander manage to pass a note in which he informed that he was awaiting trial because he was accused of terrorism. At that time, he and Iryna were still held in Melitopol. As one of the Melitopol residents told Telegraf, he crossed paths with the former journalist in one of the improvised prisons in Melitopol at the end of May - beginning of June 2023. During short conversations, Iryna said that she was detained because she "loved Ukraine very much."

A year after the detention of Iryna and Olexander Levchenko, the Russian side still has not announced any charges against them, as it did with many other civilian hostages.

"The fact that the Russians provide no information about Iryna and her husband is deliberate behavior. Firstly, it may indicate that no criminal cases have been initiated against them, they are not prisoners, and they have not been transferred for further formalization of their status," explains Igor Kotelianets, the chairman of the Association. "Such people can be used for forced labor, servicing Russian soldiers, subjected to harsh torture, especially if they are activists, journalists, officials. Russia does not recognize the fact of detaining a person if it is not at least formalized."

The occupiers fear the civilian residents of the occupied territories, so they do a lot to intimidate them. This is the most effective strategy for deterring a large number of potentially disloyal individuals whom they perceive as a threat. Therefore, they dramatically remove people who later disappear without a trace. Additionally, they install equipment to tap phones, fuel hostility on social media, cultivate the practice of informing, pressure those who refuse to take passports, and even blackmail those whose relatives remain in the temporarily occupied territory. In some cases, individuals are forced to gather information and pass it on to the Russians. In this situation, such people are in a hostage-like position," says Igor. 

Numerous appeals from the Ukrainian journalistic community to international organizations demanding the release of the former journalist and her husband did not help shift the case of Iryna and Oleksandr. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian side continues to seek ways to bring civilians back. One of the avenues for this is the recently established working group under the Coordination Staff for the Treatment of Prisoners of War.

"The working group under the Coordination Staff is the only structure that includes representatives of the staff, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Office of the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, the Office of the Prosecutor General, as well as other government agencies. Representatives of civil society organizations will also be involved. For example, I am planning to work as part of it," says Igor Kotelianets. "I hope that the Working Group will help find new mechanisms for the release of civilians. At the very least, for the first time, some body responsible for this track has been established. There have been no meetings yet, we are waiting for the first meeting of all participants to be convened." 

The Office of the Prosecutor General has identified attracting the attention of the international community to civilians deprived of liberty in temporarily occupied territories as one of its priority areas for 2024.

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