Iryna Danilovych, a prisoner in Russia’s Woman’s Penal Colony No. 7, can likely relate to the suffering endured by Alexei Navalny while in prison. She experiences relentless headaches and ringing in her ears after enduring numerous beatings by interrogators before she was carted off to a prison cell hundreds of miles from her Crimean home.

A court in Russian-occupied Crimea sentenced Danilovych to a seven-year prison term after police supposedly caught her carrying explosives in 2022. “Her real crime was her work as a journalist,” said her father, Branislav Danilovych. Danilovych is one of a growing number of Ukrainians journalists arrested on spurious charges by Russian authorities in occupied Ukrainian territory, then broken by incarceration under brutal conditions.

Branislav Danilovych, the reporter’s father, said he is unable to visit his daughter in Russia, but has fretful conversations with her by phone, raising his concern about her mental state. Beatings after her arrest damaged a nerve in her ear, and she now suffers from knife-like spasms of pain in her head.

To Russia’s political leadership, it seems as though independent journalists pose as dangerous a threat to the authoritarian system as political activists and anti-corruption investigators. At least 10 Ukrainian journalists who worked in areas under Russian occupation are today imprisoned in Russia, according to the 2023 Committee to Protect Journalists’ Prison Census.

The most recent journalist arrests occurred in early March 2024. Two Crimean Tatar reporters, identified as Rustem Osmanov and Aziz Azizov, were taken into custody in the Crimean city of Bakhchisaray on suspicion of engaging in terrorist activities. The detainees were affiliated with a rights monitoring group, Crimean Solidarity. A local court authorized two months pre-trial detention for the pair, according to a statement issued by CPJ.

“With the detention of two more Crimean Tatar journalists in Ukraine’s Crimea, Russian authorities continue to target independent voices trying to shed light on the human rights situation in the peninsula,” the statement quoted CPJ program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna as saying.

Imprisoned Ukrainian journalists, somewhat akin to the treatment that Navalny endured before dying in custody in February, face restricted access to the outside world, torture, and inadequate medical care. They often are placed in isolation cells, said Viktoriya Nesterenko, the project manager of ZMINA Human Rights Center.

Torture appears to be a go-to method for Russian officials intent on breaking the spirit of detained Ukrainian journalists. As with the case of Danilovych, Vladislav Yesypenko, a freelance contributor for RFE/RL, was charged with handling explosives, which he maintains were planted. After his conviction in 2022, he was sent to a penal colony in the Crimean city of Kerch. At a court hearing in September 2021, Yesypenko testified he had been subjected to electrical shocks in detention. “Many of us were tortured, threatened with physical destruction, blackmailed with family and friends, so that we would confess to what we did not do,” he said.

Dmytro Khilyuk, a reporter for Ukraine’s independent news agency UNIAN, was arrested in March of 2022. Family members now say they are not sure where he is, what condition he is in, or whether he is even still alive. At least one report indicated that he was being held at Prison Colony No. 7.

Russian authorities seem particularly concerned about the activities of Crimean Tatar reporters, who account for at least half of the Ukrainian journalists documented by CPJ as being held in Russian prisons. Two – Rustem Sheikhaliev and Osman Arifmetov – were arrested in occupied Crimea 2019, years before Russia launched its unprovoked assault on Ukraine. They received identical 14-year sentences.

According to a Crimean Tatar rights activist, Lutfiye Zudiyeva, many of those in custody are suffering from serious health issues. “Osman Arifmetov has a severe pain in his right leg, yet he is not receiving any medical treatment. Same as Sheikhaliev, who has constant headaches,” she said. In late February of this year, Zudiyeva herself was detained and her home searched, with police confiscating computer equipment and cell phones.

The imprisoning of Ukrainian journalists, who are classified as non-combatants, on Russian soil can constitute a war crime, given that Crimea is not internationally recognized as a part of Russia. The Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War expressly states in Section III, Article 49 that “Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power, or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

The Geneva Convention does contain a provision stating that in cases where detainees are credibly suspected of being a “spy or saboteur” or of engaging in activities undermining security, those individuals forfeit the protections contained in the Geneva convention. Even so, the pact states that such detainees “shall nevertheless be treated with humanity, and in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial.”

Regardless of the legalities, Bronislav Danilovych frets about the possibility he may never see his daughter again. “I am 76 years old,” he told a CPJ researcher. “I can’t [travel] so far. … Me and my wife are both too old.”