The Russia-installed “Zaporizhzhia Oblast Court” has sentenced Iryna Levchenko, a journalist from Melitopol unlawfully detained in 2023, to 15 years in prison, having found her guilty of espionage, as was reported on the court’s website and on Telegram channel on 4 September. News of the verdict emerged at 9am.
The court reported that Iryna Levchenko remained in occupied Melitopol after the start of the full-scale invasion and did not renounce her Ukrainian citizenship.
“By using the Telegram messenger app to make contact with a resident of territory controlled by the UAF, the woman agreed to assist Ukraine’s intelligence services by passing on information about the locations of administrative buildings and staff of Russian state bodies, as well as the movement routes of Russian Armed Forces personnel, military vehicles, weaponry, and other troops and military formations on the territory of Zaporizhzhia oblast,” the statement reads.
The Russian authorities claim that in February 2023 she “passed on information about Russian state ministries and agencies, including those within the security bloc, along with their addresses and staff lists.”
“Passing on this information to the Ukrainian side could have led to these strategic locations being targeted in strikes. At the same time, she did not delete the aforementioned information from the memory of the mobile phone she owned, continuing to store it until her criminal activity was stopped by officers of Russia’s FSB Directorate in Zaporizhzhia oblast,” the occupation court stated.
Iryna Levchenko was convicted under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Espionage”), specifically “the transfer, collection, or storage, with intent to pass on to the enemy, of information that could be used against the Russian Armed Forces — that is, espionage, if such acts are committed by a foreign national.”
The “Zaporizhzhia Oblast Court” found the retired journalist guilty and sentenced her to 15 years in jail.
The name of the judge who handed down the verdict is unknown. In the video posted on the occupation court’s Telegram channel, his face is blurred out.
According to the Russian propaganda outlet TASS, Iryna Levchenko was arrested and her case investigated by FSB officers.
As IMI has reported, Melitopol-based journalist Iryna Levchenko, unlawfully detained in 2023, was regularly transported by Russian occupation forces from a Donetsk pre-trial detention centre to occupied Melitopol for investigative procedures.
According to RIA Pivden, the journalist’s case had been completely inaccessible to outsiders, with even her lawyer denied full access to it.
Previously
It was reported in June 2026 that Iryna Levchenko had been moved from the pre-trial detention center in Simferopol to a prison in Krasnodar (Russia).
Iryna Levchenko and her husband Oleksandr were kidnapped in temporarily occupied Melitopol (Zaporizhia oblast) in May 2023. This information was confirmed by IMI’s own sources in the city. Iryna and her husband have been retired for several years. The occupiers detained the couple on the street, first keeping them together and then separating them.
As per RIA Pivden, Oleksandr Levchenko was released in August 2024. He had been imprisoned in occupied Melitopol the entire time. Upon release he was issued a document stating that he had served 21 day of administrative arrest for “curfew breach”. He was not given back the passport, credit cards, and money confiscared during search. After the detention, he only saw his wife once during a prison walk, but they were not allowed to talk.
Iryna Levchenko has been a journalist since 1981. She worked for large-circulation newspapers, for the Melitopol district newspaper Novyi Den, was a correspondent for regional and national printed media.
Iryna Levchenko is on the Institute of Mass Information’s list of civilian journalists imprisoned by Russia.