Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Levchenko is serving a 16-year prison sentence after a Russian court convicted him August 2, 2025, on charges of participating in an illegal armed group.
On August 20, 2023, officers with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in the southeast Zaporizhzhia region detained Levchenko, according to the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine, a local advocacy and trade group. His detention was not made public until Russian state-owned TV channel Rossiya 1’s Vesti Nedeli program reported the news two months later.
Anastasiya Glukhovska, a former reporter with RIA-Melitopol, was detained on the same day by individuals in military garb and balaclavas, according news reports and her sister, Diana, who spoke to CPJ.
Levchenko is the administrator of the Telegram channel associated with RIA-Melitopol, a news site that covers news in Melitopol, a city in the Zaporizhzhia region that has been under Russian control since March 2022.
On September 2, 2025, a court in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied city of Melitopol, found Levchenko guilty of high treason and of calling for extremist activity online, on the charges that he used a Telegram channel to give Ukrainian forces the location of Russian units.
The court also accused Levchenko of organizing a network of correspondents who sent him information “containing calls for terrorism and violence against military personnel and representatives of the Russian authorities in the Zaporizhzhia region.”.
In September 2025, CPJ filed FSB’s online form asking comment on the charges brought against him but did not receive a response.