11 years in a Russian penal colony. The story of a business analyst Ivan Kozlov, who was abducted and illegally convicted by Russians

About 1700 civilian Ukrainians are illegally kept in places of detention in the occupied territories or in Russia, Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets told DOU. Currently, there is no mechanism that would guarantee their return home. This is because there is no such thing as a "civilian prisoner" in international law. Russia should release the captured Ukrainians without any conditions, but it does not do so.

One of the civilian hostages is Ivan Kozlov, an IT specialist who was abducted by the Russian military on April 21, 2022, when he tried to take his family out of the occupied Kherson. For several months, the family did not know where Ivan was and in what condition, only later it became known that a criminal case had been fabricated against him and he was illegally sentenced to 11 years in a maximum security penal colony. His wife Maria told DOU about the story of Ivan Kozlov. We also talked to the Ombudsman and the Media Initiative for Human Rights about the overall situation with civilian hostages and how to bring them home.

The Ukrainian version of the article.

We have chosen this photo as the cover because it is with this photo and the caption that Ivan's family tells about him abroad and asks for publicity

The family found out about the fighting not from the news, but from the apartment window

Before the full-scale invasion, 35-year-old Ivan worked as a business analyst at ArtSoft. Before that, he had his own workshop where he made furniture. It was a hobby that grew into a living. But when his wife became pregnant with their second child, Ivan decided that he wanted to spend more time with his family and work from home. That's when he came up with the idea to take a course in business analytics. Ivan worked in IT for about a year.

"Ivan wanted to share the responsibilities of caring for his daughter and spend more time with his family. But in reality, it didn't work out that way, because working in IT took almost all of his time. But he liked it, and, as I understood from his stories, he was doing well," says Maria Kozlova.

Ivan even got a part-time job as a business analyst at another company. The Kozlovs raised two children and dreamed of owning a house on the outskirts of their native Kherson. But the family lived near the Antonivskyi Bridge, which was used by the occupying army to enter the city on February 24, 2022, so they found out about the full-scale war not from the news but from their apartment window.

Maria recalls that at that time she felt only hopelessness. The family could not leave Kherson immediately due to personal circumstances, so they stayed in the city for two more months.

The Russians took Ivan away, and his wife and young children went into the unknown

Every day the situation in Kherson was getting worse. The Kozlovs' apartment was constantly under fire, so the couple decided to get out of the occupied city. The family planned to leave through Crimea to Georgia, but at the checkpoint before entering the peninsula, the Russian military took Ivan for interrogation, which lasted several hours. Maria and her children waited for her husband and tried to get at least some information about him from the occupiers, but they said nothing.

"They showed me where to go with a machine gun. They said I would not see my husband," Maria recalls.

The woman had no choice but to take her children and move on. Ivan did not answer the phone anymore, so there was no contact with him. The Russian military took all of Maria's devices, but she hid an old cell phone in her backpack in her clothes. When she got to a safe place in Georgia, she desperately started calling everyone she knew and telling them what had happened.

At that time, there were no specific algorithms for relatives' appeals, so Maria reported Ivan's abduction to all Ukrainian authorities: the police, the prosecutor's office, the Security Service of Ukraine, the International Committee of the Red Cross, etc. At the same time, she was trying to figure out how and where she and her children would live in a foreign country. Mariia found a church volunteer service in Georgia that accepted refugees from Ukraine, settled in with them, and began searching for Ivan.

Ivan with his family

Half a year with no information about her husband

Three weeks later, the woman found out from her friends that all Ukrainians detained in Crimea were taken to the Simferopol Detention Center No. 1. Maria's mother, who was in Kerch at the time, started going to the detention center every day to ask about Ivan. However, she did not receive any information from the Russians.

"My mom wanted to know if Ivan was definitely in this detention center, but she was not told anything. She showed documents proving that they were close relatives, she was directly in this detention center, but there was no result. You can imagine how difficult it is to find out all this remotely," says Maria.

Next came the stage of sending inquiries through the websites of various Russian institutions: the Ombudsman, the prosecutor's office, etc. Maria was assisted by a volunteer lawyer from Russia, because only those who were directly on the territory of the aggressor state had access to the platforms. Maria received multiple emails saying that "there is no information about such a person."

But one day, a response to a request to the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service was received stating that "a person was detained for opposing the SMO (Special military operation)." However, the text did not contain Ivan's name, and such letters were sent to all the hostages' relatives. Only six months later, Maria received an official confirmation from the Russian side that Ivan was in the Simferopol Detention Center No. 1. Maria's mother went to the detention center with this document and tried to give Ivan a parcel, but the Russians would not let anything through. So the wife and the lawyer kept sending requests to the Russian institutions.

At the same time, Maria appealed to the Ukrainian authorities and provided information about the missing person, the circumstances under which it happened, as well as all the documents she had received from Russia. Ukrainian institutions accepted the information and then responded that the fact of "deprivation of personal freedom as a result of Russia's military aggression" was confirmed.

"They received information about Ivan's whereabouts from me. I provided all the details, and they simply entered them into the register," Maria explained.

Later, Maria, as well as other relatives of the detained Ukrainians, received a letter from the Russian side saying that Ivan had been transferred to the Simferopol Detention Center No. 2.

"There was a separate building there, where everything was arranged specifically for Ukrainians who were taken from the Kherson region. This building is much more isolated than other detention centers. The regime is stricter there, and there are video surveillance cameras right in the places where people are held. Prisoners are under surveillance around the clock," said Maria.

It is impossible to assess the conditions in which Ivan is being held. We only know that he is in a two-man cell.

After our conversation, a video of the interrogation and "trial" of Ivan Kozlov appeared online. Here is a screenshot from it:

Ivan had been deceived for a year that his wife and children were also detained

In February 2023, Ivan Kozlov was charged under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code on "espionage." It was then that a Russian lawyer contacted his wife for the first time. Maria refused the lawyer appointed by the Russian side and chose a lawyer under a contract. It was he who met with Ivan and told Maria about her husband's condition.

It turned out that the Russians had been telling Ivan for a year that Maria had also been detained, and that their children had been sent to an orphanage in Russia. Because of this, Ivan was very depressed and tried to commit suicide several times.

"Through a lawyer, I sent the first letter written by my own hand, in which I told him that we were safe and sound and got out of that hell. Ivan was shocked. He admitted that he had hoped to the last that we were okay, and that the Russians were just lying," Maria recalled.

The investigation lasted for six months, followed by three court hearings (the last on November 30, 2023), after which Ivan was sentenced to 11 years in a strict regime colony. In March 2024, an appeal was filed, but it did not help.

"The appeal process was as fake as everything else. There was no result. The sentence was not reduced," Maria said.

Letters are the only way to communicate

When Ivan was convicted, he was registered in the Russian prisoners’ system, and Maria was able to correspond with her husband and send him parcels. The couple discusses only family and general topics, as letters are censored.

Excerpts from Ivan's letters / Photo courtesy of his wife

Ivan's condition improved when they were able to write to each other. Maria tells her husband news about her children, friends and relatives.

"Ivan writes fairy tales to the children in his letters. They are small and don't really understand when I say that 'dad says hello'. For them it means nothing, but a fairy tale is a special connection. I tell him stories about them, about their growing up. Now my daughter is three years old and my son is almost seven. Ivan hasn't seen them for two years. I send him black-and-white photos, which is important because children are constantly changing, and this way he can at least see them. Ivan is very interested in how our life is organized, how we survive. My father-in-law died of a stroke when Ivan was captured, and my mother-in-law has a group 2 disability and was left alone," the wife said.

Maria sends her husband a parcel of clothes and food every month. The permitted weight is 30 kilograms. In the detention center, the food is terrible, sometimes they give you a soup made of rotten fish. It is impossible to live off on such food for a long time.

Ivan is waiting to be transferred to a strict regime penal colony

Back in the first weeks of her husband's detention, Maria informed the companies where he worked. ArtSoft immediately offered to help and still supports her husband's family financially. Ivan even corresponds with his boss and colleagues through his wife.

Now the IT specialist is waiting to be transferred to the penal colony. When he is transferred, Maria will no longer be able to send monthly parcels. It is unknown where Ivan will be transferred and how long this process will take.

"There is a terrible uncertainty. I don't know where he will be sent. In the middle of the big uncertainty, there are many more small ones. I am constantly stressed. There are no possible options, only uncertainty," Maria admitted.

The lawyer Yulia Bohdan, who is helping Maria, noted that the period of transferring is the most difficult, because a person is deprived of the opportunity to report his or her whereabouts. She also emphasized that Ivan's detention is illegal, and the case against him is fabricated. Neither she nor Maria knows any details of the charges or the evidence base, as the case files under the article on "espionage" in Russia are top secret.

"Russians can come up with various charges under the article on espionage. The case is completely fabricated. The only person who tells the family anything is a Russian lawyer. But he conceals the course of the case and all the details of the detention," Yulia Bogdan explained.

It is known that Ivan was severely beaten during his detention, as were other Ukrainian prisoners. His wife could assess her husband's physical and moral condition, but the Russian side does not allow video calls or even telephone calls.

According to Yulia Bohdan, the Russians have been holding Ukrainians for months and do not inform where they are. Some of the detainees are immediately "unfrozen" and a fabricated criminal case is opened, while others still have no information about them. Holding a person for so long is illegal even by Russian standards, the lawyer emphasizes, it is simply kidnapping. Yulia Bohdan wrote to various UN committees about Ivan's detention, but received no response. According to her, none of the international organizations have visited Crimea to assess the conditions of illegal detention of the Ukrainian civilians.

What Ukraine is doing to free civilians in captivity

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights, said that the government had amended the Cabinet of Ministers resolution, and now the Coordination Headquarters, which deals with prisoners of war, will officially deal with civilian hostages.

Thus, a thematic working group has been set up at the Coordination Center to move forward the issue of returning civilians illegally deprived of their liberty due to Russian armed aggression.

"One of the primary tasks of the working group is to establish the places and conditions of detention of Ukrainians illegally held by the aggressor country," Lubinets said.

Maria Kozlova believes that the creation of the working group is an important achievement of her relatives, who are constantly taking part in peaceful protests in Ukraine and abroad.

Maria and her children at a protest to draw attention to civilians in captivity, Czech Republic

Lubinets emphasized that the Russian side has no legal grounds for detaining civilians. A civilian should not be detained at all, and if this happens, they should be released immediately.

However, Russia is currently completely ignoring the norms of international humanitarian law. It violates the Fourth Geneva Convention, the third article of which prohibits the capture of civilians.

"Russia must hand over civilians to their homeland without any conditions. To this end, we have now created the International Platform for the Release of Civilians Illegally Detained by Russia. Its goal is to move the issue of returning them home," the Ombudsman emphasized.

The Ombudsman spoke about civilian hostages during his working visit to Qatar. The state agreed to participate in negotiations with Russia on the return of civilians.

According to Lubinets, at this stage it is very important to:

• provide the ICRC with access to places of detention of civilians;
• create working groups of countries that will put pressure on Russia on this issue;
• negotiate and find third countries that will take care of the return of civilian hostages to Ukraine.

The Media Initiative for Human Rights also says that the involvement of third countries is important. Head of Documentation Anastasia Panteleeva noted that their organization raises this issue at all international platforms:

"We speak at the OSCE, cooperate with UN monitoring missions, with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and collect testimonies from civilians and prisoners of war."

The difference between civilian hostages and prisoners of war is that the military are taken legally during hostilities, as it is provided for in the laws and customs of war (it is important to emphasize here that the horrific conditions in which they are held by the Russians are illegal). Subsequently, the parties conduct exchanges and return their people. At the same time, the story of civilian hostages is completely illegal and there is no one to exchange them for.

"We cannot exchange civilians for the military. If we exchange thousands of Russian soldiers for thousands of Ukrainian civilians, then, first, how will we return the military? Secondly, Russia has unlimited resources in the occupied territories to take new hostages.

If we exchange the military for civilians once, the Russians will kidnap the same number of civilians in the occupied territories. This can be an endless process. According to international law, people should just be released," Anastasia explained.

The conditions in which Ukrainians are held

Occupants often keep civilian hostages together with prisoners of war. Therefore, it is the military released from captivity who are almost the only source of information about civilians.

The conditions in which hostages are held are terrible. They are constantly transferred from one detention center to another. The reason for such transfers is unknown. Anastasia Panteleeva suggests that the Russians want human rights activists to be unable to establish the whereabouts of the illegally detained. In addition, in each new detention center, people are expected to be "received".

"This is a process where people are lined up and beaten. They can beat them from morning to evening on the first day. Hostages can be taken for interrogation again, where they are tortured. The Russians organize corridors where people are forced to run very fast and are beaten with sticks or stun guns along the way. If a person is transferred frequently, he or she often goes through this horrible process. According to the testimonies, there are cases where not everyone was able to survive this "reception," Anastasia said.

The Russians are trying to use hunger as a weapon. The prisoners are given either very little food or a more or less normal portion, but are given a few seconds to eat it. The food is very hot, so a person cannot physically eat it. Anastasia knows from those released from captivity that in such cases, prisoners mix hot soup, tea and bread in one plate to swallow everything quickly.

It is also known that the occupiers set sniffer dogs on the hostages, which tear their legs. The conditions of detention vary from one detention center to another. For example, in the occupied Crimea, the detention centers are somewhat better than in Russia, Anastasia says.

A sentence in Russia does not influence the return of a civilian. Sentsov’s case

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 147 civilian hostages have been returned, says Dmytro Lubinets. The mechanism of their return is unknown. The Media Initiative for Human Rights believes that it was most likely an ad hoc agreement to add several civilians to the list of prisoners of war.

Both the human rights organization and the ombudsman emphasize that the return of hostages is not affected by whether the Russians have sentenced them, as in Ivan's case. Before 2022, there were cases when Ukraine returned home civilians who had been convicted in Russia. The most famous of these was the return of film director Oleg Sentsov in 2019. He was also illegally convicted by the Russians, but international publicity helped bring Sentsov back home after five years of detention.

According to Anastasia Panteleeva, the most common articles under which Russians open illegal criminal cases against Ukrainians are espionage, international terrorism and countering the Special military operation (SMO). Very often, a person is forced to confess to something he or she did not do during torture.

"During torture, a person can say anything. Now in Mordovia, our civilians are given a pile of papers, the top and middle of which are closed, and they have to sign at the bottom, otherwise they will be beaten. A person does not know what they are signing. The prisoners assume that they are witnesses in some cases," Anastasia said.

It is very important to alleviate the suffering of hostages today. To do this, there is the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has a mandate to visit places of detention in Russia. According to this mandate, it should confirm to relatives that a person is in detention. However, the Red Cross does not visit these places.

"The ICRC says that the Russian authorities do not allow them, but perhaps they are not active enough. It happens that even when a person is on trial in Russia and we have a photo from the courtroom, the ICRC still does not give confirmation. We talk to them, ask, insist, motivate, criticize, but we cannot force them to do their job," Anastasia explained.

According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights, Russia is holding:

• From Kyiv region — 224 hostages;
• Chernihiv region — 26;
• Sumy — 33;
• Kherson — 294;
• Kherson — 178;
• Mykolaiv region — 20;
• Zaporizhzhia — 286;
• Donetsk — 225;
• Luhansk — 102;
• Kharkiv region — 163;
• Crimea — 110.

In total, 1661 people. However, the organization suggests that the actual number may be four to five times higher.

Where to appeal for the relatives of people abducted by Russians

If the whole family is under occupation and someone has been abducted, then, according to Anastasia Panteleeva, it is very dangerous to contact the Ukrainian authorities. You need to have contact with relatives on the territory controlled by Ukraine to file a report of abduction.

If you are already on the territory controlled by Ukraine, the algorithm of actions is as follows:

• leave a statement at the police station and take a DNA test;
• write a statement to the Security Service of Ukraine;
• create an electronic account on the website of the Coordination Center;
• write a statement to the Ombudsman. All the details on how to do this are here.
• It is also a good idea to contact the ICRC. Ukrainian human rights activists do not have high hopes for it, but they say that the appeal itself is important.

"You also need to contact a non-governmental organization, such as ours. There are about 40 NGOs in Ukraine that deal with civilian hostages or are related to this issue. It is important to inform human rights activists because we interview the released soldiers. If we know that someone has been kidnapped and taken to Russia, we pay attention to this during interviews to find out at least some information, to confirm where the person is," says Anastasia Panteleeva.

Relatives of civilians illegally held by Russia, if the information is confirmed, can receive assistance from the state - 100 thousand hryvnias for each year of captivity. In addition, when a civilian is released, he or she receives 100 thousand hryvnias of assistance. This is the responsibility of the Ministry for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories. Anastasia Panteleeva calls on all relatives of civilian hostages to use this opportunity, because it is the best the state can offer now.

The only way we can help civilian hostages is to spread information about them. It is the publicity that can influence the course of the case. The more the world knows about the crimes of the Russians, the better. The only caveat: if a person was detained at his or her home in the occupied territory, you should not write that witnesses said about it. If there are only neighbors, then you are putting them in danger. They may become the next civilian hostages.

Dmytro Lubinets assured that the Ukrainian authorities are working every day to bring Ukrainians home. Human rights activists hope that it will be possible to involve third countries that will force Russia to release people.