This investigation was conducted by Anton Naumliuk and Ukrainian Archive and published in partnership with Ukrainska Pravda, the original version can be found here:

English: https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2026/07/23/8045540/
Ukrainian: https://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2026/07/23/8045540/
Russian: https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/articles/2026/07/23/8045540/

How did Russia turn Crimea into a hub for abducted Ukrainians?

Collage: Andrii Kalistratenko, Ukrainska Pravda

This is the latest instalment of a major investigation about how the Russian authorities in occupied Crimea have turned abduction into deliberate policy. In the first part ("Abductions in Crimea after the full-scale invasion: secret detention centres, Putin's classified decree and hundreds of names"), we looked at how abductions, a practice developed by the Federal Security Service (FSB), became even more cruel, opaque and widely used as a tool to suppress dissent following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. New detention centres have appeared that hold suspects in secret for months, or even years. Some centres are so secret that cell windows are permanently darkened, and it's extremely hard to figure out who runs them. All efforts to identify those who have disappeared are frustrated by the coordinated obfuscation of the state: the FSB, prison service, prosecutors and the courts. The number of abductions we have confirmed in Crimea – 230 – is clearly not a final figure.

Today we publish the next part of our investigation about how Russia turned Crimea into a transit hub for those abducted in other occupied territories. Most often, these are people from Ukraine's Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. In addition, we look at another change that has taken place since the full-scale invasion: the abduction of women. Prior to 2022, there were only four abductions of women – and all of them dated from the first days of the occupation. Today, the number of confirmed abductions of women is over 30.

The well-documented case of Iryna Danylovych

At about 08:50 on 29 April 2022, Iryna Danylovych, a nurse in the Crimean coastal town of Koktebel, approached a bus stop. She was tired after her night shift in the Malakhit medical centre and was heading home. There were no buses. When a grey Škoda Octavia with tinted windows and the number plate K189TM (from Crimea) stopped, two men got out of the car – one in a black uniform with a balaclava covering his face, and the other in civilian clothes. The latter produced some sort of ID, said he was an FSB officer and said that he wanted to speak with Iryna. She took fright and started to argue, but he tried to calm her down, saying that it was only an interview; that there was no need for them to get a court decision; and that it wouldn't last long. Iryna got into the car. Inside, there were two other men wearing masks. Inside the vehicle, everything changed. The men started yelling at Iryna, demanding she hand over her phone. She immediately started to feel unwell, and she was about to faint. They allowed her to get out of the car, but not to walk away. She sat down at the side of the road. The man in civilian clothes got out at the same time and went up to a UAZ Patriot SUV that was parked nearby (and also had tinted windows).

At this moment, a taxi stopped alongside. Iryna shouted for help. But the men around her said something to the taxi driver, flashed their IDs, and he drove off. The man in civilian clothes walked back over to the Patriot SUV and then returned. When Iryna stood up, collected her belongings, and tried to leave, the men grabbed her and forced her into the car, which promptly drove away. After this moment, no one could get any official information about Iryna Danylovych for almost two weeks.

Security camera footage from a nearby petrol station later showed all the details of the abduction. If you watch the video, you will see that, after Iryna was taken away, the Patriot SUV drove up to the empty bus stop. A man got out of the car and spent a long time examining the scene of the abduction and the nearby bushes. After that, he left too. The abduction lasted 19 minutes.

While the Patriot vehicle was parked at the bus stop, Iryna was being driven to Simferopol. "Shut up and sit quietly if you want to live," Iryna was told by the man in civilian clothes in response to her question as to why she had been abducted. In court, it emerged that this man was Yuri Chevalkov, an employee of the Crimean FSB. They parked in a field outside the village of Nasypne, where there was no one around. The car stopped, Iryna's arms were twisted behind her back, and her phone, tablet and other belongings were confiscated. She tried to argue, but they told her that if she did not stop talking, they would drive to a forest near the Russian city of Belgorod and kill her.

At about noon, they arrived at the FSB headquarters in Simferopol, where Iryna was ushered inside with a bag on her head and searched – her clothes, everything in her bag, and even her glasses case. Everything was recorded. Then, the bag was put over her head again, and she was led into a cellar without cameras. This was when they started to hit her.

Iryna Danylovych is a career nurse. However, she also posted a lot on social media about corruption in the medical profession in Crimea – including about how medics who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic were not paid the special bonuses that they were promised. She was a member of the independent trade union Doctor's Alliance, and wrote for media outlet INjir and human rights project Crimean Process.

While she was being assaulted in the FSB cellar, Iryna was asked about the Doctor's Alliance as well as about independent journalists who work in Crimea – particularly Crimean Tatar journalists from the human rights group Crimean Solidarity. "We will take you to a forest and finish you off there," said FSB officer Oleg Savchenko. "No," interrupted his colleague Sergei Suvorov. "Better to take her to Mariupol and leave her there." During this conversation, Iryna was being suffocated with a plastic bag.

About a week later, they used a polygraph on her. They asked her just one question over and over again in the course of a day. "Do you work with the American intelligence services? British? Polish? Ukrainian?" She was given food once a day. As there was no toilet in the cellar, she used a plastic bottle.

Iryna remembers how, one day – sometime after 5 May – Suvorov said to her, laughingly: "Do you know you have a lawyer? He turned up today and was looking for you. We told him you're not here. Don't hope that someone will find you." It was lawyer Aider Azamatov who had visited the FSB headquarters. Hired by Danylovych's friends and relatives, he was trying to establish her whereabouts. This was when they obtained the CCTV footage from the petrol station that had recorded the abduction.

By the evening of 6 May, Iryna – who had been repeatedly assaulted – had signed dozens of blank forms and even recorded a video where (hiding her bruises) she stated she had not suffered any physical or psychological violence. She hoped that she might be freed after the video, but that night she was taken to an investigator Oleksandr Lavrov, who had already drawn up charges. Lavrov said that they had found an explosive device in her glasses case with fragments of needles from medical syringes. In the morning, the exhausted Iryna Danylovych was taken to an isolation cell with a bag on her head. The next day, she was officially arrested. A week later, her relatives and lawyer were finally told that she was in a pre-trial detention centre in Simferopol.

Iryna Danylovych's father, Branislav, filed a complaint stating that his daughter had been abducted, but the Military Investigative Committee declined to open a case "because there was no crime." In documents that emerged subsequently as part of her criminal case, there was a note that Iryna had voluntarily come to FSB headquarters and told officers she was happy to spend as much time with them as they needed. After this, the note claimed she was given a room with a bed, shower and regular meals. In actual fact, this document was one of the blank forms that Iryna had signed in the cellar.

At the end of December 2022, Iryna was sentenced to six years and 11 months in prison for storing explosives by a court in the Crimean city of Feodosiia. She was first transferred to a prison colony in Zelenokumsk in Russia's Stavropol Krai, and then to a colony in Mordovia, which is southeast of Moscow. As a result of the violence she experienced in FSB custody, she fell ill and lost hearing in one ear. She went on hunger strike in an attempt to demand medical help, but still did not get the treatment she needed.

The abduction of Iryna Danylovych is the most well-documented abduction of a woman that took place in Crimea and is a prime example of how this process of abduction usually unfolds. Firstly, FSB officers always seem to take part in the abduction, and the abductee is hidden from relatives and independent lawyers, who are lied to by the security services and local prisons. Later, the abduction is retrospectively legitimised by agencies acting in concert: the pre-trial detention centre to which the detainee is transferred; the court, which remands the detainee in custody in the presence of a state-appointed lawyer; and the Investigative Committee, which refuses to open a criminal case about the abduction. This well-developed system makes it impossible to find the abducted woman (if the FSB wants to keep her isolated) or even establish the fact of an abduction. All that the relatives and independent lawyers can do is wait for the abducted person to be charged with some crime and for the case to be sent to court. Often it is only then that the detainee's fate becomes clear.

In the case of Iryna Danylovych (and other women), the FSB apparently decided abduction was necessary in order to disorient, frighten and obtain a confession (with the use of threats and violence), which could then be used in court.

The abduction of women in Crimea

The abduction of women in Crimea began in earnest after the full-scale invasion in 2022. Up until then, there were only four documented incidents of abductions of women that all took place in March 2014 when "Crimean self-defence forces" and, apparently, FSB officers detained three activists from the Automaidan movement and journalist Olena Maksymenko. While they were beaten, several had their hair forcibly cut, and all threatened with execution and sexual violence, they were eventually freed and returned to Kyiv-controlled Ukraine. Until 2022, there are no other recorded cases of such abductions.

However, after the start of the full-scale invasion, the number of abducted women rose sharply. By the end of 2025, there were 32 confirmed cases. It's likely that the real number is much higher. Out of the 32 cases in which we know the names of the abductees, 25 were abducted in Crimea, and seven were transferred to Crimea from other occupied territories. Some of them are still being held in isolation in Crimea.

In the autumn of 2025, Maryna Ryff, a resident of the Crimean town of Gurzuf, submitted an application for a Russian residency permit. Before this, Ryff – a native Crimean resident – had only used a Ukrainian passport and been open about her pro-Ukrainian views. However, in September 2025, Russia tightened residency rules, including for those living in occupied territories. Wanting to avoid deportation, Ryff decided to apply for a residency permit. At first, everything proceeded without a hitch. But when she went to the migration service office in Simferopol in November to get her fingerprints taken, she disappeared, managing to send her loved ones an SOS message through a special app on her phone.

Her friends and relatives began searching for her, but everywhere they turned – including the FSB and the police – told them that Maryna was not among their detainees. Later, it emerged that, immediately after she was detained, Ryff had been taken to a Simferopol court that sentenced her to 14 days in prison on three administrative charges (discrediting the Russian army, displaying extremist symbols, and minor online hooliganism). She was put in a Crimean police isolation cell, where she spent two weeks.

A former prisoner who was held in isolation in the same unit at the same time as Ryff recalled (on condition of anonymity) how they heard her voice from a neighbouring cell during morning and evening rounds. When her 14 days of detention ended, Ryff was taken out of her cell, put in a car waiting in the courtyard of the building, and driven away. Her mother was waiting for her outside the gates, but she never saw her daughter. The former prisoner recalled that Ryff shouted "Mum!" when she was in the courtyard. After this, we have had no information about Maryna Ryff. All state institutions have told Ryff's relatives, or her lawyer Emil Kurbedinov, they are not holding her. Ryff's residency permit application was turned down for "national security" reasons, and she was banned from entering Russia for 50 years. Her lawyer and relatives suspect that Ryff is in Simferopol's pre-trial detention centre No. 2, but they have no confirmation. In other words, Maryna Ryff was abducted at the end of November 2025 and has been held in secret ever since.

Currently, the location of five of the 32 women confirmed to have been abducted in Crimea is unknown. The search for them is complicated by the fact that there is no wing for female prisoners in either Simferopol's pre-trial detention centre No. 2 or in the FSB's pre-trial detention centre No. 8. However, we know for a fact that women are held in both places. The absence of cells specifically designated for women is likely a way for the prisons to deny to relatives and lawyers the existence of female prisoners.

For example, Sakha Manhubi, a member of the Karaite Jewish movement, was held in pre-trial detention centre No. 2 for almost a year. She was abducted at the beginning of November 2024. The police refused to open a case about her abduction, and the FSB said they had not detained her. At the beginning of February 2026, her whereabouts became known when the abduction was "legalised" with the help of a Simferopol court, which ordered Manhubi's arrest on charges of treason. In April, she was sent for a forced psychiatric assessment.

A total of 24 women have had their abductions "legalised" in this way – and are now either serving a prison sentence (nine women) or still under investigation (15 women, including Manhubi). Among these women, 14 are accused of either treason or espionage. This includes Iryna Danylovych because, although she was accused of storing explosives, she was abducted with the intention of being accused of fabricated espionage charges (this is clear from the papers of her criminal case). In addition, women have been abducted for anti-war posts on social media, putting up anti-war, or pro-Ukraine posters and other anti-war statements.

Among the abducted women there are medics, teachers and Ediye Muslimova, the editor of Crimean Tatar children's magazine Armanchyk. Muslimova was detained by FSB officers on 21 November 2024. Witnesses described how three men ushered her into a white GAZelle light passenger vehicle in front of her home. For the next 36 hours, Muslimova was held in the FSB headquarters in Simferopol. Her phone was confiscated, and she was not given access to a lawyer. After a day and a half, she was released having been forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement. To this day, it remains unclear why she was abducted and why she was released.

There is little difference in the number of abductions of women and men in Crimea after 2022. Just like men, women are detained and held in isolation facilities on suspicion of disloyalty: espionage, treason, anti-war posts online or participation in anti-war protests. And they are held in similar conditions to men. While pre-trial detention centre No. 2 and the FSB's pre-trial detention centre No. 8 are formally male-only facilities, they also hide abducted women. They may go for months without being given a change of clothes or hygiene products and they are put under intense psychological pressure – including by the threat that their isolation could last for years. They can also be beaten and tortured (like Danylovych). Finally, the length of time for which they can be held in secret is similar to that for men. The longest a woman has been held in this way is Iryna Horobtsova, who was abducted in Kherson in May 2022 and held for over two years in secret in Crimea. The only other Crimean prisoner – male or female – who has been held for longer in secret was Oleksandr Babych, the mayor of Hola Prystan, who was abducted at the start of the full-scale invasion and kept in secret for three years in Crimea.

A Crimean hub for secret detentions

In addition to those detained in Crimea, the peninsula's detention facilities also hold people originally abducted from other occupied areas of Ukraine – mostly Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. More rarely, there are also those from Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Thanks to its developed prison infrastructure and convenient location, Crimea has become a hub for Ukrainian citizens being held in secret.

Some prisoners spend months in pre-trial detention centre No. 2, or the FSB pre-trial detention centre – others spend years. What usually happens during this period is that investigators build a criminal case using confessions extracted under psychological pressure or torture. Only then are they allowed to see lawyers, and the case sent to court – either in Crimea, or in the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don (if it's a terrorism case). However, in some cases, no charges are ever brought and the prisoner spends years in limbo in Crimea, or is transferred to Russia (to places like pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in the southern Russian city of Taganrog that was turned into a holding facility and torture site for Ukrainian POWs and abducted civilians after the full-scale invasion).

The number of abductees brought to Crimea since 2022 has fluctuated: the peninsula is primarily used as a transit hub, rather than a permanent place of detention. Nevertheless, every year since the full-scale invasion, Crimea has held about 100 prisoners that have been transferred from other occupied areas. These people are almost always held incommunicado. According to the Crimean Human Rights Group, there were 94 such detainees being held in detention centres in Crimea at the end of 2025. At the end of 2022, there were 110 (as per human rights organisation Zmina).

Notably, prisoners from pre-trial detention centres and prisons in Kherson Oblast were transferred through Crimea to Russia before Ukrainian forces liberated the city of Kherson and part of the surrounding area in November 2022. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, there were about 1,600 such prisoners. They did not stay long in Crimea, but were sent on to prisons and detention centres across Russia. For example, children from the Oleshky Orphanage in Kherson Oblast were relocated to the still-occupied town of Skadovsk on the Black Sea just before liberation, while 28 other children were transferred to a facility in Crimea's Bilohirsk. As many as 96 residents of a psychoneurological institution in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, were evacuated via Crimea. Ultimately, they were sent to Russia's Stavropol Krai.

To all intents and purposes, the same sort of patterns can be seen when it comes to those abducted in occupied areas. They're usually abducted on suspicion of terrorism (like, for example, Pavlo Zaporozhets in Kherson or Yaroslav Zhuk in Melitopol). Or they can be abducted during "filtration" (the screening process that takes place on the border between Crimea and Kherson Oblast at the Chonhar-Dzhankoi or Kalanchak-Armiansk crossing points). This is what happened to Crimean Tatar Appaz Kurtamet.

Yaroslav Zhuk was abducted in Melitopol on 17 June 2022, immediately after an explosion at the city's Economic and Industrial College. The FSB believes that the incident was an attempt to kill Olena Shapurova, the head of Melitopol's Education Department. Zhuk was passing the site of the explosion when another car suddenly blocked his way. A man in civilian clothes brandishing a pistol got out of the car, forced Zhuk out of his own vehicle, beat him up, and drove him away with a bag over his head. Zhuk was taken to a cellar in an unidentified house where, for a week, he was tortured with electric shocks and the flame of a gas stove. Zhuk's torturers were trying to extract a confession of responsibility for the attack. In the end, he signed three different confessions that were dictated to him by the guards who had tortured him. After bruises on Zhuk from the beatings had faded, he was forced to record an admission of involvement in the attack. He was kept in the cellar until 8 August. All that time, friends and relatives were unsuccessfully trying to locate him (all the occupation security agencies said that they were not holding him). Only on 10 August was he transferred to Crimea and his detention officially registered by the FSB in Simferopol. In June 2024, he was convicted on international terrorism charges and sentenced to 14 years in jail.

After the security forces had used torture to obtain a confession from Zhuk, the Crimean authorities did not try to hide him from either independent lawyers or relatives. Zhuk was kept in Crimea so his confessions obtained as the result of torture could be officially procedeed.

The FSB acted exactly the same way with Ukrainian lawyer and military veteran Pavlo Zaporozhets, who was abducted in Kherson on 9 May 2022, on suspicion of preparing a terrorist attack during Victory Day celebrations. Zaporozhets was held incommunicado for three months in the cellar of the military administration on Kirov Street (as well as other unknown locations) and beaten and tortured with electric shocks almost every day. Zaporozhets immediately admitted that he had been preparing an attack on the occupation forces but insisted that he was a partisan (i.e. a combatant) and, as such, should be treated as a POW who cannot be punished for taking part in military activity. Nevertheless, he was tortured into admitting to charges of international terrorism, and then he was transferred to Crimea with a bag on his head. In Crimea, he was held in pre-trial detention centre No. 1 and then moved to the newly opened pre-trial detention centre No. 2. Just like Yaroslav Zhuk, he was not hidden while in Crimea. There was a formal investigation process, and, in November 2023, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Thus, he was held in secret for three months following his abduction, during which time he was regularly beaten and tortured, and he was only transferred to Crimea so that the confession extracted under torture could become part of an official legal process.

On 23 July 2022, the young Crimean Tatar Appaz Kurtamet was traveling from the occupied town of Novooleksiivka in Kherson Oblast to visit relatives in Crimea. When he entered the border checkpoint building, he disappeared. He didn't pick up calls. While his phone was tracked to Simferopol, he never replied to calls or messages. Relatives in Crimea who began looking for him received phone calls from unidentified individuals who demanded they not "make a fuss." But the search continued, and Kurtamet's relatives appealed to both Russian law enforcement (who told them he had not been detained) as well as Ukraine and the Turkish government. This continued until 5 October, when Kurtamet was allowed to call his relatives from a phone given to him by an investigator. He told them he was being held in Crimea's pre-trial detention centre No. 2. It was only on 10 October that Kyiv District Court in Simferopol legalised his abduction by ordering his detention for two months. Prior to this, he had simply been a victim of abduction. Ultimately, Kurtamet was accused of financing an armed group for donating 500 UAH (approx. US$11) to a friend serving in one of Ukraine's territorial battalions. In April 2023, he was given seven years in jail.

Abductions during "filtration" or while crossing border checkpoints between occupied regions have become a mass phenomenon since February 2022. During checks, FSB border guards pay particular attention to veterans of the Anti-Terrorist Operation that Kyiv launched against Russian-backed rebels and Russian military forces in 2014, any former soldiers, and employees of Ukrainian law enforcement. They check for tattoos, contacts in mobile phones and subscriptions to pro-Ukraine chats or Telegram channels. They are most interested in men of military age, as well as those who do not have Russian passports (particularly after the autumn of 2025 when migration rules were tightened). If someone living in occupied territory does not have a Russian passport, they are seen as potentially disloyal. [The ATO or Anti-Terrorist Operation is a term used from 2014 to 2018 by the media, the government of Ukraine and the OSCE to identify combat actions in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts against Russian military forces and pro-Russian separatists – ed.]

In April 2022, IT-specialist Ivan Kozlov tried to leave his occupied hometown of Kherson with his family to travel to Crimea. When their bus stopped at the Kalanchak-Armiansk border crossing point into Crimea, he was detained. Nothing was heard about him for six months. He was initially held in Simferopol's pre-trial detention centre No. 1 before being transferred to pre-trial detention centre No. 2 after its opening (along with other Ukrainians from other occupied areas). Kozlov's family moved to Georgia, but FSB investigators sought to put psychological pressure on him by telling Ivan that his wife had also been detained and his children sent to an orphanage. A cellmate who requested anonymity said that when Kozlov was told this, he burst into tears. Kozlov was only allowed to contact his family in February 2023 after the investigation had concluded and he was charged with espionage. In November, he was sentenced to 11 years in jail.

Such abductions almost always result in prison sentences. There are some exceptions, but they are vanishingly rare. For example, school teacher Oleksiy Troyan was abducted in July 2022 after his telephone was checked at the Perekop-Chaplynka border crossing point into Crimea. Although they found a number for an employee of the Kherson department of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU) in Troyan's contacts, he was not immediately charged. Instead, he was held in secret in a cellar in an unidentified building in the northern Crimean city of Armiansk, before being transferred to Simferopol. Nothing was known about his whereabouts until September when he was unexpectedly released.

Ultimately, there is no difference in the conditions for those held in pre-trial detention centres in Crimea and those in other parts of occupied territory. Everywhere, they are hidden from their relatives and lawyers. Kozlov's family, for example, appealed to law enforcement and pre-trial detention centres on a weekly basis. But they were always told that he was not one of their detainees.

Iryna Horobtsova experienced the longest abduction of any woman

The abductees transferred to Crimea experience the same sort of pressure and torture as those kept in other occupied areas. The length of time they are held is similarly unpredictable: from a couple of days, to several years. Iryna Horobtsova was held in secret in Crimea for more than two years – the longest of any confirmed abduction case.

Horobtsova was a volunteer and pro-Ukraine activist abducted from her hometown of Kherson on 13 May 2022. She was almost immediately transferred to Crimea, where she was initially held in pre-trial detention centre No. 1. Later, she was moved to pre-trial detention centre No. 2, and pre-trial detention centre No. 8, currently under the control of the FSB. She was kept in isolation, and neither her relatives (who traveled to Crimea from Kherson) nor her lawyer Emil Kurbedinov were given any information by the detention centres or the FSB about her whereabouts. Only after 18 months (and the opening of an espionage case) did her relatives receive an official response from FSB headquarters in Moscow confirming her detention. Still, they were not allowed to see her, no communication was permitted, and she continued to be kept in isolation.

Horobtsova was accused of passing details about the location of Russian troops in Kherson to the Ukrainian armed forces. She denied this for a long time. "She said: 'I didn't do it, this did not happen, there's nothing for me to admit'," said a Crimean lawyer who has left the region but requested anonymity. "After this, she was left alone by investigators. The next time they visited her was six months later – and they again told her to confess. Over the course of 18 months, they only visited her three times. At the end she said: 'I will sign anything if only things change and become a bit clearer. It's impossible to live in such an information vacuum, without packages, without clothes, without anything.'"

In the end, she signed a confession and it was only then that her abduction was "legalised." A criminal case was opened, and she was allowed to write her first letter to her family. She told them she had lost 20 kilograms during her confinement. In August 2024, Horobtsova was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison and transferred to Mordovia.

Over the years of Russian occupation, dozens of people have been abducted in Crimea. And many more have been abducted in other areas of occupied Ukraine before being transferred to Crimea, where a whole series of detention centres – many without any formal oversight – have been established. By our calculations, there have been no less than 230 abductions since Crimea was occupied in 2014. This includes residents of Crimea, who disappeared following searches and formal detentions and were held in secret to try and get them to confess to crimes, or simply to break them psychologically. And it includes those who were abducted while visiting Crimea. The latter mostly date from the period at the very beginning of the occupation when journalists and Euromaidan activists tried to enter the peninsula. Fortunately, most of them were freed – but there are some who are still missing and some who were found dead. This also includes those who were abducted after the full-scale invasion in other occupied areas, or during "filtration" and other checks, before being transferred to Crimea. In all these cases, the occupation authorities (usually the FSB) held them in isolation, hid them from lawyers and family, and rebuffed all attempts to locate the detainees or get someone to take responsibility for holding them.

There are clear differences in the way abductions took place before and after the full-scale invasion. At the start of the occupation, they tended to be carried out by men who belonged to the "Crimean self-defence forces" and other paramilitary groups. However, by the end of 2014, it was almost always officers from the FSB and, occasionally, the Interior Ministry's Centre for Combating Extremism. Abductions became more systematic and were used most frequently for detaining Crimean Tatars – to frighten them and extract confessions required by investigators. Sometimes, like in the case of Ervin Ibrahimov, abduction was used to neutralise a possible leader, who could have become a magnet for dissent.

Over the years, the Russian authorities have built a process for abductions that involves many people from different agencies. For example, FSB officers carry out the abductions after searches and formal detentions, hiding their victims in a cellar at their headquarters on Franko Boulevard in Simferopol; prosecutors and the Investigative Committee refuse to respond to appeals to register an abduction; state-appointed lawyers help to hide abductees from independent lawyers and families and provide investigators with "legal cover"; and a court "legitimises" the abduction with a formal arrest that is sometimes backdated. In the course of 11 years of occupation, no regulatory body (like military prosecutors) has ever punished anyone involved in an abduction.

Since 2022, abductions have been used to isolate those who might cause problems – not just to exert pressure and frighten people. As a result, there was a surge in the number of abductions. Those targeted included Ukrainian officials, military veterans, and even pensioners. The abduction of women became a mass phenomenon. In order to give this a veil of legitimacy, the Kremlin issued a decree in 2022 allowing extra-legal detentions for those "opposing the Special Military Operation [as the Russians refer to their unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine – ed.]." The full text remains classified, but it's often mentioned in the criminal cases of men and women who have been abducted.

Following the full-scale invasion, a whole system of detention centres was established in Crimea – for POWs (including those charged with criminal offences) and civilians abducted in Crimea and other occupied areas. Crimea was turned into a transit and investigative hub for abducted men and women. From the very beginning, the secret pre-trial detention centre No. 8 was de facto guarded and run by the FSB – meaning there was no oversight role for the Russian prison service. In the spring of 2026, however, it was formally given to the FSB. Here, abductees are held in isolation for months or years to extract confessions from them and hide them from the outside world. In the best-case scenario, they are then tried by courts in Crimea or Russia. In the worst case, incarceration without formal charges continues to this day. The fate of many remains unknown.

Almost all abductees experience some form of torture, or at the very least psychological violence. More often than not, they are tortured in informal cells – the cellars of FSB offices, private houses in occupied areas that have been seized by the military or law enforcement, and even in the homes of police or FSB officers (like how the home of law enforcement officers Ruslan and Artur Shambazov was used immediately after abductions). The brutal conditions in pre-trial detention centres could be considered tantamount to torture. Long periods of secret detention (like in the case of Horobtsova) are used as a form of pressure.

In essence, abductions in Crimea have become part of a system of state terror that is used to suppress any expression of dissent. To some extent, this has replaced a criminal investigation. Abduction and the accompanying torture and psychological pressure were used to extract confessions in almost all the cases that we verified. Later, these confessions were used as the basis for a guilty verdict in court.

"Complaints to the prosecutor's office, indeed any complaints to higher-ranking officials, are useless. It's deliberate and brazen," said one Crimean lawyer. "They believe that they can act with impunity. Particularly since the system became more repressive and more opaque after 2022. Before then it was theoretically possible to show up at a pre-trial detention centre and try and insist on your rights in order to try and find someone who had been abducted. After 2022 no one will give you the time of day."

This publication was produced with the support of the Open Society Foundations. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the Open Society Foundations.

Anton Naumliuk

Edited by Anastasiia Kolesnykova

Translated by Howard Amos

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How did Russia turn Crimea into a hub for abducted Ukrainians?

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