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Russia keeps a lawyer from Melitopol who ran a Telegram channel about the life of the city under occupation as a slave – Reporters Without Borders.
Before the full-scale war in Ukraine began, Yevhenii Ilchenko worked in Melitopol as a lawyer. At the very beginning of the invasion, the city was occupied by Russian troops. In May, Ilchenko created a Telegram channel in which he published news about the city. He wrote about problems with the supply of supermarkets, the presence of the Russian military, petty corruption, and lines for documents.
On July 10, the Russian military stormed Ilchenko’s house. They searched the lawyer’s apartment and stole jewelry and documents. Ilchenko himself was detained under the “terrorism” article – Reporters without Borders.
At first, Ilchenko was kept in Melitopol for several weeks and tortured together with other prisoners. According to RSF, the Russian military connected electrodes to the genitals of the prisoners and intimidated them with staged executions.
Since September, the lawyer was transferred to the village of Verbove, several dozen kilometers from Melitopol. There, the man was forced to dig trenches for the Russian military or clean weapons. Ilchenko spent several months there. Now, according to RSF, the lawyer is in detention in Taganrog.
“This is the first time, in nearly forty years of defending journalism, that RSF has documented a journalist, blogger or whistleblower subject to total slavery and forced to participate in a war effort against their own country,” said RSF head of investigation desk Arnaud Froger.
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