Mark Kaliush, an administrator of the Telegram channel Melitopol Is Ukraine who was released from Russian imprisonment on 24 August, shared his experience of torture in an interview with RIA Pivden: he had been beaten, electrocuted, and forced to sing the Russian anthem.
Kaliush says that after being detained on 14 October 2023 (IMI has received reports of the detention date being 20 August 2023, — Ed.) he was first held in the Melitopol commandant’s office, then in a local detention centre, and later moved to a pre-trial detention center in Mariupol. There, he survived numerous torture sessions.
Mark said that he shared his cell in the Mariupol detention center with Heorhiy Levchenko, administrator of the Ukrainian Telegram channel RIA Melitopol.
“They would constantly ask me, ‘how did this subscriber find you,’ shoving a phone in my face. I couldn’t tell them anything, so they beat me. They beat me all the time, tortured me with electric shocks, threatened me with weapons, and forced me to sing the k…p [Russian] anthem,” says Kaliush.
The last time Mark saw Heorhiy was a year ago. The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don ordered compulsory mental health treatment for Mark. He was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Zhdanivka (occupied part of Donetsk oblast) for institutionalization.
“The medical staff there buys medicine with their own money: some cheap drugs. There are a lot of paramilitaries there and they abused us,” said Mark.
The prisoner swap went like this, he said:
“A military convoy came to the hospital. They said, ‘Pack your things, you’re going home.’ I thought they were going to send me to Crimea. But they took me to the airport. They blindfolded me, tied my hands, and put me on a plane. Then they gathered more people and took me to Belarus. And there they exchanged us.”
Mark Kaliush was detained by Russian forces in Melitopol alongside six of his colleagues, administrators of the Telegram channels RIA Melitopol and Melitopol Is Ukraine, on 20 August 20 2023. He was accused of preparing a terrorist attack. Later, as reported by Reporters Without Borders, a Russian court exempted him from criminal responsibility and sent him for compulsory psychiatric treatment for “schizophrenia” (diagnosis cannot be confirmed). He was likely institutionalized in Ukraine’s occupied territory or in the Rostov region of Russia.
As IMI reported, UNIAN journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, who had been kidnapped by Russian forces in Kyiv oblast in March 2022, was released on 24 August, 2025. Mark Kaliush, administrator of the Telegram channel Melitopol Is Ukraine, returned to Ukraine on the same day.
According to the Institute of Mass Information, at least 26 Ukrainian media workers remain imprisoned by Russia.
