The health of RIA Melitopol journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska, who was illegally detained by Russia in August 2023, is deteriorating, Slidstvo.Info reports, citing two former POWs who had been imprisoned along with Hlukhovska in the Kizel PTDC in Russia’s Perm region.
According to Stanislav Pakhomov, a serviceman released from prison in April 2026, Anastasia remains imprisoned in the pre-trial detention center where she was taken in August 2024.
“I saw her for the last time on 26 March. I heard that she was a young journalist, a civilian, and that she had leg issues. My cellmate heard that her legs were swelling,” Pakhomov said.
He added that the women in the Kizel detention center faced psychological harrasment by Russian forces, including rape threats and verbal abuse. The women are also shaved bald during the “priyomka”.
“My comrade, who was standing next to the women during the ‘priyomka’, told me that they were threatened: ‘I’m gonna f**k you, come here, you Ukrainian bitch, I’m gonna screw you.’ Their inspections take a long time: while the guys are ‘patted down’ and taken to the cells, the women stand in the ‘line’ for 40 minutes waiting for a woman to come. Men are not allowed to do this. A woman comes out and checks,” said the soldier.
In Kizel, Anastasia Hlukhovska works as a seamstress, sewing along with another female prisoner in a cell that has been converted into a small workshop.
“I have seen these two women. They were sitting separately. I first saw them on 8 March 2025. They would go out, they were sewing some stuff, sewing some kind of bedsheets. They were working, they were treated normal. [The Russians] would give them pads, as I understand it, decent white bedsheets,” recalls another former POW, Serhiy Viktorzhevskyi.
He said that only two women were imprisoned in the Kizel pre-trial detention center: “Their conditions were somewhat better. They were allowed to sit down in the cell and not just stand, they could read books. They were wearing green pants — they had sewn something for themselves. In 2025, at the beginning of the year, a woman was crying, asking for something. On 8 March, the ‘special officers’ were giving them chocolates.”
Earlier, RIA Melitopol journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska, illegally detained in Russia since August 2023, went on a hunger strike after being moved to PTDC No. 3 in Kizel, Perm region, Russia.
It was reported in late June 2025 that Anastasia Hlukhovska was in imprisoned in PTDC No. 3 in Kizel (Perm region, Russia). According to Slidstvo.Info, the journalist was detained on 20 August 2023 by FSB officers who broke into her apartment in Melitopol. They searched the apartment and confiscated all data storage devices: the laptop, the flash discs, the phone. After the search, she was taken to an undisclosed location and then moved to several consecutive prisons, including one in Taganrog, until she ended up in the Kizel PTDC No. 3 on 30 August 2024. Reportedly, she was tortured.
At least two Ukrainian prisoners, Dniprorudne mayor Yevhen Matveyev and journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, have died there.
Russian forces hacked the Telegram channel of the Ukrainian news outlet RIA Melitopol, which continuted to operate even after the occupation of Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia oblast), early on 21 August 2023. They later raided Melitopol, detaining the administrators of two Telegram channels: RIA Melitopol and Melitopol Is Ukraine.
These included Heorhiy Levchenko, Maksym Rupchov, Yana Suvorova, Mark Kaliush, Oleksandr Malyshev, and Vladyslav Hershon. Journalist Anastasia Hlukhovska, who contributed to the website before the full-scale invasion, was also detained. Some of them have already been convicted by Russian courts.
According to the Institute of Mass Information, no fewer than 26 Ukrainian civilians working in the media, including Anastasia Hlukhovska, remain in Russian prisons today.
