~Russia illegally detains 25,000 Kremlin prisoners

According to the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, Dmytro Lubinets, this is the number of civilians abducted by the Russian Federation.

The ZMINA Human Rights Centre has found that at least 21 prisoners require urgent medical care and may die unless they receive it. 

During the full-scale invasion, the National Police began investigating the enforced disappearance of 8,800 people. Russian Children's Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova claims Russia has illegally abducted over 700,000 children from Ukraine.

The Media Initiative for Human Rights has identified about one hundred places where abducted civilians are held.

The Mission of the President of Ukraine in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Qırım) confirms 189 illegally imprisoned Ukrainian citizens, 123 of whom are Qırımtatarlar.

During the full-scale war, 2,576 Ukrainian citizens were returned to Ukraine, including 144 civilians.

Human rights activist and Armed Forces of Ukraine soldier Maksym Butkevych, whose whereabouts have been unknown since August 2023, is being held in the temporarily occupied Krasnyi Luch, Luhansk region.

This was reported by the prisoner's father, Oleksandr Butkevych, Zmina reports.

After three months of silence, the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia notified the lawyer, Leonid Soloviov. The prisoner serves his so-called 'punishment' in the Penal Colony No. 2 in Vakhrushevo, Luhansk region.

Maksym Butkevych is a human rights activist who joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine at the beginning of the full-scale war. In June 2022, he was taken prisoner by Russia. In March 2023, he was 'sentenced' to 13 years in prison on trumped-up charges of allegedly violating the rules of war. 

In August, Butkevych was transferred without his lawyer being informed where he was going.

Deputy Chairman of the Qırımtatar Milliy Meclisi Nariman Dzhelial is held in a jail in Minusinsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai. The man was taken to an unknown destination two months ago.

This was reported by the prisoner's wife, Leviz Dzhelialova, Crimean Solidarity says.

Nariman Dzhelial wrote a letter when he arrived at the prison. He left Simferopol (Aqmescit) for the transfer on October 2. He arrived in Minusinsk only on November 20.

The prisoner said that he had fallen ill during the transfer but had recovered by the time he arrived in Minusinsk.

"They don't take him for walks — they haven't found a hat of the right size. He can't eat in the canteen — they give him pork. He can't eat his food - there is nothing to boil water with," said Dzhelial's wife.

It will be recalled that Russians illegally detained Dzhelial and the Akhmetov brothers in September 2021. They were accused of alleged sabotage. A year later, the so-called court sentenced Dzhelial to 17 years in prison in a maximum security colony and Asan and Aziz Akhtemov to 15 and 13 years, respectively.

The activist Yashar Shykhametov, sentenced to 11 years, complained of feeling unwell during a hearing of the Court of Appeal in Vlasikha. He was then taken out on a stretcher.

Before the hearing, he complained of increased pain in his heart and kidneys. The man has back problems. But the medicines he is given do not help.

Crimean Solidarity reports.

Later, the prisoner was returned to the hearing. The court left Shykhametov's sentence unchanged and refused to declassify the witnesses and declare their testimony inadmissible.

"It is obvious that the secret witnesses did not know Shykhametov. They claim they had been visiting his cafe for two years, but they do not remember the name, written in metre-long letters at the entrance," — lawyer Oleksii Ladin commented.

The prisoner was detained in the temporarily occupied Crimea (Qırım) on February 17, 2022. The Russian special services also detained Tymur Yalkabov, Azamat Eyupov, Lenur Seidametov, Ernest Ibrahimov and Oleh Fedorov. 

In September 2022, Shykhametov was sentenced to 11 years in a maximum security colony on charges of 'terrorism' and alleged involvement in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, which is banned in Russia.

The Russian Southern District Military Court sentenced Pavlo Zaporozhets, an Anti-Terrorist Operation veteran, to 12 years in prison.

Crimean Human Rights Group reports. 

Zaporozhets was detained on May 9, 2022, in Kherson. Three months later, he was taken to the temporarily occupied Crimea (Qırım). He is accused of allegedly planning to commit a terrorist act in Kherson.

In February 2023, he was taken to Rostov-on-Don. Zaporozhets' lawyer, Oleksii Ladin, demanded that he should be recognised as a prisoner of war. 

"As an active serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he carried out a combat order... to carry out an explosion on the route of a military patrol of the Russian Armed Forces at night... which excluded a threat to the life and health of civilians of the Russian Federation and Ukraine," Lazin said.

In a Russian colony, Crimean prisoner Ivan Yatskin is forbidden to receive and send letters.

Lawyer Mykola Polozov informs.

"The same is with the right to make phone calls to relatives. When his wife sends requests, they say he does not want to communicate with anyone, which is an absolutely shameless and bold lie," - the human rights activist adds.

Earlier, it became known that the administration of the Russian colony fails to provide medicines to the prisoner Ivan Yatskin.

Ivan Yatskin was illegally detained in 2019 in the temporarily occupied Crimea (Qırım). The man was taken to Moscow. In 2021, the occupation "court" delivered a "verdict" in the case of "high treason" — 11 years in prison.

Russian courts have illegally sentenced Ukrainian servicemen Ivan Taran, Oleksandr Naryzhnyi and Oleksii Volosheniuk to life, 28 and 23 years in prison, respectively.

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation reports.

All the soldiers were accused of allegedly killing civilians in the temporarily occupied Mariupol.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Oleksii Volosheniuk went missing in March 2022 in the Donetsk region, Taran went missing in April of the same year in Mariupol, and Naryzhnyi in January 2023 in Bakhmut.

It will be recalled that the Geneva Conventions of 1949 treat such 'trials' of prisoners of war as a crime.