Former journalist Iryna Levchenko was allegedly abducted by Russian forces in Ukraine in early May 2023 and has reportedly been held by Russia ever since.
Levchenko worked for years as a reporter for several news outlets but left journalism after Russian forces occupied the southeastern Ukrainian city of Melitopol in late February 2022, according to media reports and Sergiy Tomilenko, head of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU), a local trade group, who spoke to CPJ.
Tomilenko said that Levchenko had stopped her work for “security reasons,” and that the NUJU “connect(s) her detention exclusively with her journalistic background.” She had not worked in any capacity since then. Her husband, Oleksandr, who was detained along with Levchenko, is retired and was not a journalist. He was released in August 2024.
Tomilenko told CPJ that Levchenko had worked as a reporter covering local news and social issues for the Noviy Den local newspaper, local news website Mltpl.City, and national newspaper Fakty i Kommentarii. “I know Iryna Levchenko personally; she is a professional journalist with a good reputation,” he said.
In early May 2023, Russian forces detained Levchenko and Oleksandr in Melitopol, according to media reports and reports by the Institute of Mass Information, a local press freedom group, and NUJU. Levchenko’s relatives lost contact with her on May 5 and asked not to publicize her detention until May 30, as they hoped she and her husband would be released, those reports said.
Tomilenko told CPJ at the time that Levchenko and her husband face extremism charges and that their whereabouts were unknown.
Russian authorities have repeatedly detained journalists in Ukraine since first occupying Crimea in 2014.
In July 2024, Novini Pryazovia, an outlet covering news in the south of Ukraine, aired an interview with Iryna Levchenko’s sister, Olena Rudenko, who said that she was being held in a detention center in Melitopol. “Russia does not confirm that the Levchenko spouses are in captivity, so they have the status of missing persons,” Rudenko said.
Iryna has health issues, according to NUJU, which did not specify the nature of those issues.
According to NUJU’s regional branch of Zaporizhzhia, which includes Melitopol, the pair have been held in “inhumane conditions, almost without food, in a cold basement, on a concrete floor,” and were “subjected to physical and psychological torture.”
“For 18 months we did not know where Iryna was — no connection,” her sister Olena Rudenko said in November 2025. “She was kept in the cold, unsanitary conditions. But even there she remained a journalist. She wrote about women who are nearby and have no connection with their families.”
In July 2025, Ukrainian regional news website RIA-Pivden (formerly RIA-Melitopol) reported that Levchenko was able to send a letter to her relatives in which she said that she was being held in a pretrial detention center in Ukraine’s eastern city of Donetsk. In December, Ukrainian human rights group Zmina reported that she was being held in pretrial detention center No. 1 in Donetsk.
During her time in the center, Levchenko’s contact with her family was limited, Zmina reported. “She communicates more through volunteers,” her sister Olena Rudenko told Zmina. “The letters are short, sometimes only 10 or 11 lines, because sending them is expensive.”
On December 29, RIA-Pivden reported that Levchenko had been transferred from Donetsk to a pretrial detention center in Simferopol, in Russian-occupied Crimea. The charges against her are still unknown.
In late 2024, CPJ emailed the branch in Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia of the Russian federal penitentiary service and the press service of the Russian prosecutor general’s office but did not receive any replies. In January 2026, CPJ emailed the pretrial detention center No. 1 in Simferopol, but did not immediately receive a reply.