By Valeriia Muskharina and Viktoria Malyovana, from the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU).
No contact. No charges. No legal status. This is what incommunicado detention looks like: enforced isolation from the world and one of the most profound forms of human suffering. For three years now, journalist Anastasiia Hlukhovska from occupied Melitopol has been held incommunicado after being abducted by Russian security forces in August 2023.
For civilian detainees like Anastasiia, incommunicado detention often means more than isolation. People held this way can disappear into a system where there are no court hearings to follow, no official charges to challenge, and often no clear path to release. For their families, every piece of information becomes precious. Yet Anastasiia was not a journalist who continued reporting under occupation or sought public attention. In fact, she had done everything she could to stay out of sight.
“She hardly ever went outside”
Before dawn on 20 August 2023, FSB officers raided multiple addresses across occupied Melitopol in a coordinated sweep targeting what Russian authorities described as a pro-Ukrainian “agent network.” The primary targets were administrators of the Telegram channels RIA Melitopol and Melitopol Is Ukraine, who were later sentenced to between 14 and 26 years in Russian penal colonies. Hlukhovska was swept up in the same operation.
She worked for RIA Melitopol, a local outlet that continued covering the occupation after Russia seized the city in March 2022 under the new name RIA Pivden. When the full-scale invasion began, its editor-in-chief Svitlana Zalizetska urged her journalists to leave. Most did. Two of them decided to stay: Anastasiia Hlukhovska and Heorhiy Levchenko. Both were subsequently detained by Russian forces and remain in captivity. “Anastasiia was what I called my little bee, an extremely productive journalist,” Zalizetska told NUJU. “She wrote on social topics, interviewed people. She loved the Ukrainian language and everything Ukrainian. Despite our efforts to persuade her to leave, she made the decision to stop working and stay. That cost Anastasiia her freedom.”
Between five and six in the morning, FSB officers broke into Hlukhovska’s apartment, conducted a search, and seized her laptop, USB drives, and phone. They placed handcuffs on her wrists and drove her away in an unknown direction. It was the last time her family and colleagues saw Anastasiia clearly. Since then, Russia has maintained, in official correspondence, that it never detained her at all. As Reporters Without Bordersʼ Ukraine representative Pauline Maufré has stated: “We do not know where she is, what her situation is. Russia has never confirmed that she is imprisoned.”
According to a close acquaintance who anonymously spoke to NUJU, Hlukhovska understood the risks journalists faced under occupation. From the first days of Russian control over Melitopol, she suspended her professional activities and largely withdrew from public life. By the time she was arrested, Hlukhovska had not been working as a journalist for more than a year.
Friends say she deliberately distanced herself from professional contacts and public activities, believing this would reduce the risks of living under occupation. “She hardly left her apartment,” the acquaintance recalled. “Anastasiia was calm, thoughtful and very careful. Once she made a decision, she stuck to it. She believed that by stopping her work and keeping a low profile she could avoid attracting attention.”
Outside journalism, she enjoyed cooking, spending time with family and discussing books and television series with friends. The last time one of her close friends spoke with her, she was preparing homemade preserves for the winter and finishing the final season of Game of Thrones.
At the time of her arrest, Hlukhovska weighed only 47 kilograms and was undergoing treatment for a chronic health condition. Nearly three years of detention without regular contact have heightened her family’s concerns about her physical wellbeing. One reason she remained in occupied Melitopol was her family. Leaving would have meant passing through Russian checkpoints and filtration procedures, something Anastasiia feared could itself result in detention. Anastasiia Hlukhovska was 30 years old when she was abducted. She is 33 now.
From a basement torture site to a prison in the Urals
For almost a year, Hlukhovskaʼs family received no reliable information about her whereabouts. Relatives repeatedly approached occupation authorities and police structures in Melitopol, only to be told that she would be released after questioning. Each promise proved false.
The Russian authorities themselves issued contradictory statements about her fate. In October 2023, the FSB publicly announced the detention of a group of alleged “agents” in Melitopol. Yet in an official response sent to Hlukhovska’s relatives earlier that same month, the agency claimed it had never detained her.
The discrepancy was later documented by Ukrainian investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info in October 2025. According to its reporting, Hlukhovska was first held in the basement of a company called Ruslan-komplekt in occupied Melitopol, converted by Russian forces into a makeshift torture site. A woman detained there alongside her told investigators: “I gave her medication. She said she was also tortured with electric current. The screams could be heard. When Anastasiia was brought to us, she would always lie down.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross has recognised Hlukhovska as deprived of liberty, but no charges have been formally brought against her, Svitlana Zalizetska told NUJU.
From Melitopol, Anastasiia was transferred to Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 in Taganrog, Russia. There, according to an anonymous source cited by Slidstvo.Info, she experienced weight fluctuations due to hormonal changes and developed conjunctivitis as a result of inadequate hygiene conditions. Her lawyer sent inquiries to Russian penitentiary administrations in multiple regions; each replied that she was not being held in their facilities.
A former Ukrainian prisoner of war, Yevhenii Sholudko, told Slidstvo.Info that he heard Hlukhovska’s surname called out while waiting for medical treatment at Detention Centre No. 3 in Kizel, Perm Krai, over 2,000 kilometres from Melitopol. According to law enforcement sources, she was transferred to Kizel on 30 August 2024. That facility had already acquired a grim reputation: at least two Ukrainian civilian hostages died there, including Mayor of Dniprorudne (a town in Zaporizhzhia region, southern Ukraine, occupied by Russia in 2022) Yevhen Matvieiev and journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna.
Sholudko also described a dedicated torture room there, a padded cell without windows, toilet, or sink, where prisoners were stripped and locked alone, forced to sing the Russian national anthem. “From the womenʼs floor, we could hear female voices. There were screams,” he said.
The first news of Anastasiia in years
It took relatives, journalists, investigators and former prisoners more than two years to piece together this trail. Each new fragment of information emerged only after someone was released from captivity and returned to Ukraine. “We always learn where Anastasiia was, never where she is,” a close acquaintance told NUJU. “The information is scarce and it always arrives months later.
In June, however, NUJU received the first information in years confirming that Anastasiia Hlukhovska is alive and remains in Detention Centre No. 3 in Kizel. According to a close relative who spoke to NUJU, two Ukrainian servicemen released from Russian captivity in late April said they had seen Hlukhovska there and recognised her from photographs. One of the men was held in a cell adjacent to hers.
According to the witnesses, Hlukhovska is being held in a cell with another female detainee and works in the detention centre’s sewing workshop. They also reported that she had gone on hunger strike while in detention, although the circumstances and timing of the hunger strike remain unknown. The witnesses also said that she had been shaved bald after arriving at the detention centre. Anastasiia appeared to be physically intact, but reported that her chronic health conditions had worsened and that she had problems with swelling in her legs.
For Hlukhovska’s family, the new testimony provides the first confirmation in years that she is alive. Despite that, the journalist remains outside any transparent legal process and without officially acknowledged charges. This lack of legal recognition and contact leaves detainees held incommunicado exceptionally vulnerable to abuse, coercion and torture, while their families are forced to rely on fragments of information from people who happen to cross paths with them in captivity.
Incommunicado: alone with the torturer, in a game without rules
According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, more than 2,400 Ukrainian civilians are currently held in places of detention on temporarily occupied territories and in Russia. A share of them are held incommunicado – as Anastasiia Hlukhovska is.
Amnesty Internationalʼs report Deafening Silence concludes that Russia applies incommunicado detention deliberately and systemically. “The systematic holding of Ukrainian prisoners and civilians incommunicado by Russia is a conscious policy aimed at dehumanising them and forcing them into silence, leaving their families in agony as they wait for news of their loved ones,” Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard said. “Torture takes place in complete isolation from the outside world, in which victims are entirely dependent on their torturers. This is not a series of isolated incidents – it is a systemic policy that violates every principle of international law.”
Human rights advocates say the only way to find those held incommunicado is to document every case of abduction, to notify state authorities, and to speak publicly about the facts of each detention. That is what the families need most.
“My greatest fear is that people will forget about her,” a close acquaintance of Anastasiia told NUJU.
The Hlukhovska case
Anastasiia Hlukhovskaʼs story became public in April 2024, when RIA Pivden’s editor-in-chief Svitlana Zalizetska disclosed her abduction at a session of the Council of Europe Campaign. For eight months before that, her family had been searching in silence. Her case has since been entered into the Council of Europe Platform to Promote the Protection of Journalism, enabling ongoing demands for explanations from the Russian side.
International pressure continues. Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly demanded information about Hlukhovska’s whereabouts. The Committee to Protect Journalists has called on the United States Congress to make the release of Ukrainian journalists a diplomatic priority, specifically highlighting her case. International and European Federations of Journalists have formally included her in their campaign for the release of all Ukrainian journalists held by Russia. According to the Coalition For Women In Journalism, as of late February 2025, four Ukrainian women journalists were among 89 imprisoned worldwide. Hlukhovskaʼs name appeared on that list alongside Iryna Danylovych, Iryna Levchenko, and Yana Suvorova.
The National Union of Journalists of Ukraine has maintained a sustained campaign for its colleaguesʼ release, combining information work with international coordination. NUJU President Sergiy Tomilenko insists on the unlawfulness of Hlukhovska’s detention, demands confirmation of her whereabouts, and emphasises that incommunicado isolation is equivalent to enforced disappearance. At international meetings in Geneva, Vienna, and Stockholm, he has repeated the same point: every missing journalist is not a statistic, but a person who worked with facts and truth.
In March 2026, Hlukhovska’s case was also presented at a side event to the 70th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, organised by NUJU with the Committee to Protect Journalists, PEN America, the survivors network “Numo Sisters,” and the EU Delegation to the United Nations.
NUJU also disseminates the findings of investigations, organises public events, and produces multimedia projects – among them are the Executed Freedom of Speech project and the documentary Free the Voices, where Hlukhovska’s story is presented as evidence of the systemic persecution of journalists. The film’s international premiere took place in Brussels on 26 May, at a special screening hosted by NUJU and the Brussels Press Club in partnership with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), and the European Federation of Journalists.
The last trace of Anastasiia Hlukhovska was a surname heard in a queue at a detention facility in the Ural mountains. The search has not stopped since.
Source: EFJ
