Week-ending 31 October 2025
‘The hunger was terrible. I was constantly hungry. People went crazy from hunger. We talked about food from morning till night. You’d look at a bar of soap and think it was ice cream. The cold was unbearable. We stood by the radiator all day. If we stepped half a meter away, we froze. When the radiators didn’t work, we walked in circles in the cell. I wore socks on my hands, and underwear around my neck instead of a scarf, because I had two pairs and didn’t have anything else. We had no outerwear, not even for walks. We went outside in what we always wore indoors: synthetic prison trousers and jackets, and the cheapest rubber slippers. In the morning, they forced us to sing the Russian anthem. The next place was Pakino in the Vladimir region. In Pakino, they would tell us to stand in a circle, then throw a mattress on top of us, and tell the biggest guy to climb up — we had to hold him up. I had scabies — most of us had scabies. Some had tuberculosis. As far as I know, no one ever visited. Tatyana Moskalkova, Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights, came to once but we didn’t see her. They staged a Potemkin village — a façade — for her in another building. They gathered some prisoners and, for one day, even opened a canteen for them to eat there. Later, she sent a representative who brought humanitarian aid from Ukraine, but half of it was stolen. He also brought some clothes. We took underwear and socks, but it was a show for the camera, later they took it all away from us.’
– Dmytro Khilyuk [on 2 November, the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists, Dmytro shares his story]
Source: ‘Ukrainian journalist Dmytro: “I never imagined that people would be kidnapped”,’ Amnesty International, 31 October 2025
Background from Amnesty International: Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khilyuk was arbitrarily arrested, detained and forcibly disappeared by Russian armed forces for three years, five months, and twenty-one days — in hunger, cold, and without cause. Taken from his home region near Kyiv in March 2022, he disappeared into Russia’s prison system. His case illustrates the plight of Ukrainians being forcibly disappeared, facing torture and other ill-treatment, and the dangers civilians — in particular journalists — face under Russian occupation. Throughout his ordeal, Amnesty International worked with Ukrainian colleagues to trace his path through contacts inside Russia. Dmytro says he survived by “holding on to the thought that it would end one day.”
