29 April 2025
April 29 — the Day of Abduction of Iryna Danylovych
On April 29, 2022, citizen journalist and human rights defender Iryna Danylovych was abducted by officers of the Russian FSB in Koktebel, in temporarily occupied Crimea. She was returning home after a work shift when two unidentified men forcibly dragged her into a vehicle near a bus stop and took her away in an unknown direction.
That same day, occupation security forces arrived at the Danylovych family home in the village of Vladyslavivka near Feodosiia. Conducting a search without providing a copy of the procedural documents, they seized Iryna’s laptop, the family’s phones, and personal belongings, leaving her parents without any means of communication. According to Iryna’s father, Bronislav Danylovych, the search was conducted with serious violations and was accompanied by threats.
“It was an ordinary day; Iryna was supposed to finish her shift and come home. About an hour before she was expected to return, two cars arrived. The local police officer came out and said they were here to conduct a search. They read out some kind of court ruling; I asked for a copy, but they didn’t provide one. Then they carried out the search. I was surprised, but not frightened — I had nothing to fear. We had nothing here unless they planted something, and that would be a different matter,” Iryna’s father recounted.
For the next two weeks, Iryna Danylovych’s family had no information about her whereabouts. Appeals to the so-called police and attempts to initiate an official search yielded no results. The family independently reviewed surveillance camera footage, managing to capture the moment of the abduction — Iryna was seized by two men.
For eight days after the abduction, Iryna Danylovych was held in an FSB basement without official detainee status. According to her testimony, during this time she was subjected to psychological pressure, interrogations using a polygraph, and threats of physical violence, including threats to take her to a forest or to Mariupol. She was fed only once a day, denied proper access to a toilet, kept in cold conditions, strangled, and beaten, as the captors tried to force her into cooperation or to confess to fabricated charges.
“The lawyer was informed that Iryna was in a pre-trial detention center. By then, they had stopped beating and torturing her in that FSB basement. We still don’t know where she was from April 29 to May 7. We don’t know what they did to her during that time,” noted the father of the political prisoner.
It was only on the 13th day after her disappearance that it became known that Iryna Danylovych was being held in the pre-trial detention center in Simferopol. It later emerged that the occupation administration had officially recorded her detention with a week’s delay and only then brought fabricated charges against her for “possession of explosives” under Article 222.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.
On December 28, 2022, the occupation “court” issued an illegal sentence — seven years of imprisonment in a colony and a fine of 50,000 rubles. The fabricated charge of acquiring explosives was excluded from the final ruling, leaving only the charge of possession. The prison term was counted from the date of her actual detention — April 29.
In March 2023, due to deteriorating health and the lack of adequate medical care, Iryna Danylovych declared a hunger strike. According to her father, Bronislav Danylovych, Iryna was in a critical condition: she had lost hearing in her left ear, suffered from severe headaches, had coordination issues, and likely experienced a minor stroke.
In June 2023, the “appeal court” partially amended Iryna Danylovych’s sentence by reducing her term of imprisonment by one month. However, the overall decision on the conviction remained unchanged.
Iryna Danylovych is currently serving her sentence in a women’s penal colony in the town of Zelenokumsk, Stavropol Krai, in the Russian Federation. The conditions of her detention remain extremely harsh, and she is still denied proper medical treatment.
The case of Iryna Danylovych is a stark example of systemic human rights violations committed by the occupation administration in Crimea and a complete disregard for international law. Her abduction on April 29, 2022, detention without legal status, torture, denial of adequate access to legal counsel, fabricated charges, and the issuance of an unlawful sentence all contradict fundamental guarantees enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions. The persecution of Iryna Danylovych is part of a broader pattern of repression aimed at silencing independent voices in temporarily occupied Crimea and fostering an atmosphere of fear among those who oppose the policies of the occupation regime.