UKRAINE

RSF investigation: tracking the missing journalists of Melitopol



One year ago, multiple journalists and media workers were arrested by occupying Russian forces during a roundup of the inhabitants of the city of Melitopol in Southern Ukraine. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) launched an investigation into their fate and found many of them illegally imprisoned in Russia and occupied Ukraine.

20 August 2023 marked a turning point in the occupation of Melitopol. At the crack of dawn, at least four journalists and news content creators were escorted away by men in military uniform, as documented by RSF. In October 2023, their arrest was confirmed by Russian propaganda videos in which the journalists were forced to make false confessions – yet no information on their fate or whereabouts has been released since. Russia is holding these media workers illegally, moving them from prison to prison in conditions that are much closer to enforced disappearance than legitimate detention. RSF’s investigation retraced the paths of their imprisonment, shedding light on the situation as Russia’s silence persists.

Before the roundup, Melitopol residents showed fierce resistance to Russian occupation. Quickly conquered after Russia’s large-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, the streets of the “cherry capital” – as the city is known in Ukraine – filled with protestors marching against the occupation, while the internet buzzed with content from inhabitants reporting on life under Russian rule. Repression intensified: the mayor was arrested in March 2022, followed by several journalists in the summer of 2023. At the same time, the occupying forces launched the Mediatopol centre, an institution revealed to be a school for propaganda by an RSF investigation.

Since then, information on the situation in Melitopol has become rare. The city has lost the last of its reporters and news arrives in dribs and drabs. Attempting to contact non-occupied Ukraine comes with great risk. “One phone call can ruin your life,” sums up a retired reporter living in the city of Zaporijjia, where the Melitopol administration relocated.

"By persecuting journalists and spreading propaganda, Russia is exporting the predatory policies on information that it uses at home to the occupied territories of Ukraine. Many citizens of Melitopol have fallen victim to the Russian hunt for journalists. RSF will continue documenting their captivity – which constitutes a war crime – and campaigning for their release.

Arnaud Froger

Head of RSF's Investigations Desk

Four journalists detained and one enslaved

The first journalist arrested during the August 2023 roundup was Georgy Levchenko, administrator of the Telegram channel Ria-Melitopol, a local media outlet with over 80,000 subscribers. He was taken prisoner before sunrise, around 4 a.m., according to footage of the arrest filmed by Russian forces. The video was released two months later and broadcast on Channel One Russia, the Kremlin's premier TV channel for propaganda. Under incredible stress, the journalist appears apologetic and frightened in his cell; he was likely still in Melitopol when the video was filmed. In a press release dated 27 October 2023, the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) accused Levchenko of giving information about the Russian military to the Ukrainian intelligence services.

Several sources have told RSF that Levchenko was transferred to the pre-trial detention centre in Mariupol, a port city in southeastern Ukraine that held one of the biggest battles since the outbreak of the war. RSF has not yet been able to confirm Levchenko’s exact whereabouts.

However, RSF found two content creators for the Telegram channel Melitopol tse Ukraina (“Melitopol is Ukraine”), which broadcast local news during the occupation, in the Mariupol detention centre: Yana Suvorova, the channel's administrator, and her colleague Vladyslav Gershon. Both were also arrested in the early hours of 20 August 2023 and filmed for a Russian television report. Like Levchenko, Suvorova and Gershon were arrested, interrogated, and forced to give a confession that was broadcast on Channel One Russia.

In an FSB document seen by RSF, the two journalists are accused of having “intended to take part in sabotage and terrorist operations” alongside Ukrainian military intelligence agents in the Zaporizhia region of Ukraine. The document does not provide any concrete evidence for these accusations.

According to RSF’s information, the journalists were transferred to multiple detention sites – some of which were improvised, as civilian infrastructure in conquered areas is used to hold Russian prisoners – before arriving in Mariupol. They were held alongside Russian prisoners who were repeat offenders and found themselves in cells so overcrowded that some prisoners had to sleep standing up.

Anastasia Hloukhovska met the same fate. A journalist for Ria-Melitopol, she had chosen to put her activities on hold since the invasion. Arrested during the roundup on 20 August 2023, she was first held in Melitopol, in a DIY boutique turned into a makeshift prison, before being transferred to the pre-trial detention centre in Priazovske, a village 30 km away. Like the three other arrested journalists, Hloukhovska has been accused of “terrorism.” According to RSF’s information, she is currently held in Rostov, an administrative region in southwestern Russia.

While investigating the disappearance of these Melitopol journalists, RSF discovered the case of Yevhenii Ilchenko, a Melitopol inhabitant who launched his own Telegram channel to report on the Russian occupation of his city. Ilchenko was arrested by Russian forces on 10 July 2022 and subjected to forced labour a few weeks later. Essentially, Ilchenko was enslaved. RSF’s investigation discovered that his jailors forced him to dig trenches and contribute to the war efforts against his own country.