March 3, 2026, 11:44 p.m.
(Oleksandr Dolzhenkov. PHOTO: Zarema Barieva)
Blogger from Odesa Oleksandr Dolzhenkov, who was detained in occupied Crimea in 2020, was released after five years and four months of illegal detention in Russian prisons.
This was reported by Zarema Barieva , manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center .
He was detained on September 19, 2020 in the occupied Crimea, where he went with his mother. After spending a few days in Yevpatoria, they went to Sevastopol for two days. They stayed at a hotel, where the man was detained by the Russian Federal Security Service.
Oleksandr spent 8 months in Simferopol's SIZO-1, in a cell designed for 14 people, together with 18 other prisoners, and then the occupation Yevpatoria City Court sentenced the young man to one year in a general regime colony, charging him with creating an "extremist community on a social network aimed at returning Crimea to the jurisdiction of Ukraine."
Since a day in the pre-trial detention center counts as 1.5 days, on May 21, the day of the sentencing, Oleksandr was released right in the court building, but before the young man could leave the walls of the Yevpatoria court, he was attacked and arrested again by FSB officers on the street. This time, the occupiers accused the young man of having allegedly called the police station in Temryuk, Krasnodar Krai, on May 15, 2018 (the day the Crimean Bridge was opened) and reported that the bridge was mined.
After his re-arrest, the occupiers took Oleksandr to Detention Center 5 in Krasnodar, where he was regularly beaten with rubber truncheons and even hit on the head with a metal crane for disobeying the administration of the detention center. Oleksandr spent three months in solitary confinement with total soundproofing. His relatives could not send Oleksandr things, money or food, as each time the parcel sent to Dolzhenkov's name arrived allegedly on a sanitary day.
On August 30, 2021, the guy was sent to SIZO-3 in Novorossiysk. On September 3, 2021, the first court hearing was held, at which Dolzhenkov was charged with false reporting of a terrorist attack. The punishment under this article in Russia provides for a fine of 700 thousand to 1 million rubles or imprisonment for a term of 6 to 8 years. On November 17, 2021, the Temryuk court sentenced him to 6 years in a general regime colony. The appeal upheld the verdict.
Three months later, Oleksandr was transferred to the colony to serve his sentence in the second illegal criminal case opened against him. Dolzhenkov was transferred from SIZO-3 in Novorossiysk to Krasnodar, and from there, on March 2, 2022, Oleksandr was transferred to the Primorsko-Akhtarsk Detention Center-11.
On January 21, 2026, Oleksandr Dolzhenkov was released after 5 years and 4 months of illegal detention. On the same day, Oleksandr was handed a notice from the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Krasnodar Territory, according to which he was banned from entering the Russian Federation on March 22, 2022 for a period of 8 years after serving his sentence. He was taken with an escort to Sochi, from where he was deported by plane from Russia to Yerevan.
Кирило Бойко