Detention: On September 19, 2020, 22-year-old Oleksandr Dolzhenkov arrived in occupied Crimea with his mother. After a few days in Yevpatoria, they stayed at a hotel in Sevastopol. In the morning, instead of an alarm clock, they were awakened by heavily armed special forces breaking down the door. The young man was thrown to the floor, restrained, and taken to the FSB office in Sevastopol, then to the FSB building in Simferopol. "For several days, Dolzhenkov was under intense psychological pressure, hearing all the abusive language of the Russian language. FSB officers morally destroyed the young man, calling him: 'Ukrainian nit,' 'Banderite,' 'fascist,' 'zombified Ukrainian,'" reported Zarema Bariyeva, manager of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center.

Sentence: Oleksandr spent 8 months in the overcrowded Simferopol Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 1 – a cell for 14 people with 18 inmates, rats, cockroaches, and mold on the walls. On May 21, 2021, the occupation Yevpatoria City Court sentenced him to 1 year in prison for "creating an extremist community." As a day in the pre-trial detention center counts as 1.5 days, he was released on the day of sentencing directly in the 'court' building. However, outside, FSB officers immediately rearrested him. This time, he was accused of allegedly calling the Temryuk police on May 15, 2018, the day the Crimean Bridge opened, to report a bomb threat on the bridge. After the second arrest, Oleksandr was taken to Krasnodar Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 5, where he was regularly brutally beaten with rubber batons and even a metal crane on the head for disobedience to the administration. On August 30, 2021, he was transferred by 'Stolypin car' to Novorossiysk Pre-trial Detention Centre No. 3. On November 17, 2021, the Temryuk Court sentenced Dolzhenkov to 6 years in a general regime colony. On March 2, 2022, he was placed in a correctional colony in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai.

On January 21, 2026, after serving 5 years and 4 months of unlawful imprisonment, Oleksandr Dolzhenkov was released. On the same day, he was handed an 8-year entry ban to the Russian Federation, escorted to Sochi, and deported by plane to Yerevan.

Oleksandr Dolzhenkov was born on December 2, 1997. A native of Odesa, he graduated with honors from the Faculty of Geology and Geography at Odesa National University named after Mechnikov. He ran a YouTube channel under his name, where he published video blogs about traveling in Ukraine and some European countries. He was passionate about geological research.

Information used from open sources: ZMINA, Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Radio Liberty (Crimea.Realities).

Photo: ZMINA.

Update date: 03.07.2026.