The mental health of Yana Suvorova, a journalist from Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia oblast) unlawfully detained in Russia, has deteriorated after sharing a prison cell with inmates who had attempted suicide, Yana’s boyfriend Oleksandr Nikolayenko told ZMINA in an interview.
Suvorova was assigned the same cell as young women who had attempted suicide in occupied Donetsk.
“After it became clear that Yana would be moved to Donetsk and sentenced, her morale plummeted. Her stay in Donetsk was especially difficult: she was surrounded by girls who had already attempted suicide, and this psychological pressure had an effect on her,” Oleksandr said.
Nikolayenko suggests that this could have been a way to influence the journalist into cooperating. “It’s hard to say exactly,” he adds.
Having been convicted by Russia’s Southern District Military Court, the young woman was sent to detention centre No. 2 in Taganrog, which may have been the location where journalist Viktoria Roshchyna was tortured to death by Russian prison guards, Ukrainian investigators suspect.
The conditions in this detention centre are even worse, says Nikolayenko: a cold, unsanitary cell and even worse treatment by the staff.
Yana Suvorova, now 21, was imprisoned by Russian security forces at 18 on trumped-up charges. They accused the girl of collecting intelligence on Russian troops and law enforcers through a group chat she administered. The Russian forces claim that the collected data helped was used in a missile strike on their units in Zaporizhzhia oblast in February 2023.
Previously
Yana Suvorova, an administrator of the Telegram channel Melitopol Is Ukraine who has been in Russian detention since August 2023, was sentenced to 14 years in prison on 23 October 2025. The sentence was issued by the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don (Russia).
Yana Suvorova was convicted under the Russian Criminal Code articles on “organising a terrorist group and involvement in it”, “acts of terrorism,” and “espionage”. Data on the sentence was reported by the Southern District Military Court in Telegram.
Yana Suvorova was detained along with other channel administrators for RIA Melitopol and Melitopol Is Ukraine in August 2023. Back then, the 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).
Yana Suvorova is on the Institute of Mass Information’s list of 26 Ukrainian media workers unlawfully detained by Russian forces.
