Russians enslave Ukrainian who founded Telegram channel about occupied Melitopol
Kyiv • UNN
Russians arrested Yevhen Ilchenko for running a Telegram channel about occupied Melitopol. He was tortured and forced to slave labor, including digging trenches for the Russian military.
Russians have taken Ukrainian Yevhen Ilchenko, who founded a Telegram channel about occupied Melitopol, into slavery. UNN reports this with reference to the Center for Strategic Communications and Information Security.
We are talking about a citizen journalist Yevhen Ilchenko. As Reporters Without Borders (RSF) found out, he was arrested for creating a telegram channel with news about the Russian occupation of the city
Before the full-scale invasion, Yevhen Ilchenko was a lawyer in Melitopol. On May 3, 2022, he launched the @Mitopol telegram channel. His posts were about local news, such as supply problems in supermarkets, the presence of occupiers on the streets, and corruption.
In July 2022, Ilchenko was arrested on "terrorism" charges. In the messages he managed to send to his relative, which RSF has reviewed, he described how he and 15 other Ukrainians were first detained for several weeks in Melitopol
Reports indicate that torture was commonplace - detainees were regularly electrocuted, including on the genitals. Sometimes they were taken naked to the woods in the middle of the night to be "executed" and then brought back to the prison in terror
In September 2022, Ilchenko began to be involved in forced labor. Photos sent by Yevhen from captivity and reviewed by Reporters show that he was forced to build trenches for the Russian military and clean their weapons for several months. Arnaud Froget, head of the investigations department at Reporters Without Borders, said that this is the first case of slavery they have recorded in almost 40 years of defense
According to RSF, Yevhen Ilchenko returned to prison after several months of forced trenching. According to one of Reporters' sources, he may now be held in Taganrog in harsh conditions.