Russian authorities unlawfully hold Kyiv volunteer Oleksandr Kostiuk in Simferopol pre-trial detention centre No. 2

Russian forces abducted volunteer Oleksandr Kostiuk in the occupied part of the Sumy region on 5 March 2022. He was held in a transit camp in Russia, a pre-trial detention center in Stary Oskol, a penal colony in Valuyki, and a pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Kursk. He is now being held in pre-trial detention center No. 2 in temporarily occupied Simferopol, Zarema Bariieva, a manager at the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, reported. 

Oleksandr Kostiuk

She said that before 24 February 2022, Kostiuk worked for a logistics company in Poland, while his wife, Maryna, lived in Kyiv with their two children. He returned to the capital and, on 27 February, took his family to his parents’ home in a village near Borodianka, which was soon occupied. With no mobile connection, Maryna was unable to contact him. It was only on 9 April 2022 that they managed to leave the occupied area.

“She later learned that her husband, Oleksandr, had actively joined volunteer efforts to evacuate people and was himself captured on 5 March 2022 in the village of Dzerkalka in the Romny district of the Sumy region“, Bariieva said.

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She reported that as Oleksandr was leaving the occupied village of Dzerkalka, Russian soldiers abducted him and took him away in an armored personnel carrier to an unknown location.

On 19 April 2022, a released prisoner of war told the family he had shared a cell with Kostiuk in Stary Oskol in Russia’s Belgorod region. Before that, the volunteer had been held in a transit camp in Russia, where he was tortured, taken out to a field, and subjected to a mock execution. During interrogations, Russian forces questioned Oleksandr about Ukrainian soldiers and “spies”.

“It later emerged that Russian soldiers abducted Kostiuk on 5 March 2022 and drove him around for 10 days in an armoured personnel carrier, wearing only a thin jacket, using him as a hostage“, Bariieva says.

Oleksandr was held in pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Stary Oskol until 14 April 2022, after which he was transferred to a penal colony in Valuyki, Belgorod region. He remained there until the end of May 2022.

In September 2023, Maryna learned that her husband had been transferred from pre-trial detention center No. 1 in Kursk, where he had been held until August 2024. She later received a letter from him from there.

According to the Crimean Tatar Resource Centre, Kostiuk is currently being held incommunicado in pre-trial detention center No. 2 in Simferopol.

“As Oleksandr’s wife Maryna, who was herself born in Crimea, says: ‘The last thing I ever wished for was for my husband to end up in Crimea under such circumstances’“, the human rights defender says.

ZMINA previously reported that Kostiuk, who had worked as a lorry driver in Poland before the full-scale invasion, returned to Ukraine and began volunteering, evacuating people from frontline areas. On 5 March 2022, he went missing while traveling to the Sumy Oblast to evacuate civilians. His abandoned car, with documents inside, was later found by the roadside.

Witnesses reported that a Russian military column had passed along the same road on the day he disappeared. According to testimony from a former detainee and information from the family, Russian soldiers detained Oleksandr for “identity checks”, drove him around in an armoured personnel carrier for a week, and then held him in a tent camp in Russia’s Kursk region, where he was interrogated and threatened. On 17 March 2022, he was transferred to pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in Stary Oskol, Belgorod region.

In 2022, the International Committee of the Red Cross officially confirmed that Kostiuk was being held in Russia. Despite this, the administration of the Russian pre-trial detention centre denies that he is being held there. As of 2026, Oleksandr has been in captivity for three years and is suffering from serious health problems, including herniated discs and spinal protrusions. His relatives continue to appeal to the Coordination Headquarters and the Ombudsman’s Office, calling for effective mechanisms to secure the release of civilian hostages.

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