Russian authorities have detained Ukrainian journalist Anastasiya Glukhovska on undisclosed charges since August 20, 2023.
Glukhovska was working as a reporter with RIA-Melitopol, a news website that covers news in Melitopol, a city in Zaporizhzhia occupied by Russia shortly after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Glukhovska resigned at the start of the Russian occupation, as she understood “from the very beginning” the risks her work entailed, her sister Diana told CPJ.
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers in Zaporizhzhia also detained Heorhiy Levchenko, the administrator of the Telegram channel associated with RIA-Melitopol, on the same day as Glukhovska, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local advocacy and trade group.
Glukhovska’s and Levchenko’s detentions were not made public until late October 2023, when Vesti Nedeli, a program of the Russian state-owned TV channel Rossiya-1, and the Russian defense ministry-affiliated TV channel Zvezda, showed videos of their arrests. The video shows people in military garb and balaclavas searching Glukhovska’s apartment, looking at her laptop, handcuffing her, taking her out of the house, and putting her in a car.
Glukhovska was not named in the video, and her family was unable to get any information about why she was detained or whether she faced any charges, her sister Diana told CPJ in April 2024. “From the first day and until today, we sent requests to everyone, but we did not receive any answers,” she said, adding that the FSB and Russian President Vladimir Putin were among those they had tried to contact.
CPJ did not include Glukhovska in its 2023 prison census because her relatives requested that details of her situation not be published at the time.
As of October 2024, there was no information about Glukhovska’s location. Her sister said that the journalist was detained in the southwestern Russian city of Taganrog as of late September, but Melitopol journalist Svitlana Zalizetska told CPJ that Glukhovska had since been moved to another city.
Diana told CPJ in late October 2024 that she had information that Glukhovska was “in a relatively normal physical state and, apparently, in a depressed psychological state,” but added that, “despite everything, my sister is holding on and supporting the other prisoners around her.”
In late 2024, CPJ emailed the FSB requesting comment on Glukhovska and Levchenko but received no response.