On 9 April 2024, Svitlana Zalizetska, the editor-in-chief of RIA South (RIA Melitopol), an independent Ukrainian news outlet which used to work undercover in the Russia-occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol, reported that journalist Anastasiya Hlukhovska is being held in Russian custody since August. Zalizetska made the news public at a press conference in Kyiv, explaining that the information was only being made known now as following Hlukhovska’s arrest, relatives initially hoped to increase her chances of being released by not publicizing her case. The RIA South editor-in-chief added that, to date, all attempts by Hlukhovkska’s family to determine her whereabouts were unsuccessful, as Russian occupying authorities refused to provide any information on her case.
In October, occupying authorities communicated the detention of Heorhii Levchenko, the editor of RIA Melitopol, a popular Telegram channel which published news about events in Melitopol, a city in southern Ukraine under Russian occupation since March 2022. Levchenko and several other inhabitants of Melitopol were accused of appeals to terrorism, the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine (NUJU) reported.
According to NUJU, Russian occupying forces saw the Telegram channel as a “media hostile towards them”, detaining Levchenko and several other individuals whose names remain unknown.
At the end of August, Ukrainian media had already reported that the Telegram channel run by Levchenko had been hacked by Russian occupying forces. However, for the next two months, no information was available about the journalist’s whereabouts, or the charges formulated against him.
UPDATE: On 21 October 2025, Ukrainian investigative outlet Slidstvo.Info reported that Hlukhovska was being held in a prison in the Russian town of Kizel (Perm region), that she had been in detention at that location for over two years, and that Russian authorities had formulated no charges against her to date.