Russia is holding at least 100 people in detention centers in occupied Crimea with no contact with the outside world and no access to a lawyer. According to Ukrainian human rights defender Viktoria Nesterenko of the ZMINA Human Rights Center, the aggressor country has not conducted any investigation or trials, Ukrinform reports.
The figure is not ZMINA's alone. Two years ago, the European Parliament cited more than 200 Crimean political prisoners, 67 of them with severe health problems ignored by Russian authorities. What Nesterenko describes is an intensification: the persecution is widening, and the sentences are lengthening.
Families pressured into silence
"There are missing persons, and we don't know where they are. Both women and men, at least 100 people, are held in Crimean detention centers without contact with the outside world," Nesterenko says.
Relatives are intimidated and pressured by the FSB to tell no one anything, she said.
"We don't know what the situation is there, what the conditions of detention are, whether the person is even alive, what condition they are in, what is happening with their health," the human rights defender continues.
Sentences that have roughly doubled
Nesterenko says that the policy of judicial persecution of Ukrainian citizens under occupation has intensified.
"If before 2022 prosecutors demanded, for example, 7 to 10 years' imprisonment, now courts give from 10 to 20 years for the same articles," she adds.
The charges are mostly espionage, treason, terrorism, and extremism, on what she called fabricated grounds.
The pattern is visible in documented cases: the Crimean Tatar activist Azamat Eyupov was sentenced to 17 years on terrorism charges, his family rejects as fabricated.
Nurse losing her hearing in cell
Nesterenko names Iryna Danylovych, a civic journalist and nurse detained in April 2022, as one of such Russian prisoners. She was sentenced that December to seven years on charges of possessing explosives, which she denied.
In detention, her health collapsed: she has lost hearing in one ear and suffers severe headaches, is denied proper medical care, and has been subjected to ill-treatment, including being forced to listen to loud Russian music, the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission recorded.
In September 2025, the EU sanctioned two Russian officials over abuses in Crimean detention centers that directly affected Danylovych.
