RSF demands from Russia proof abducted Ukrainian journalist Khyliuk still alive

The international organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) demands that the Russian authorities provide evidence that Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk, whom the Russian invasion forces abducted in Kyiv regions in the early days of the incursion, is alive.

That’s according to a statement released by RSF on Friday, Ukrinform reports.

"With prison conditions in Russia in the news again after opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death in a penal colony, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) voices concern about the fate of a Ukrainian journalist held in a completely illegal manner in Russia for the past two years. A recently released Ukrainian prisoner of war told RSF he saw the journalist in May 2023 but there has been no trace of him since then," the statement reads.

Reporters Without Borders clarified that it is a recently released Ukrainian prisoner of war who said he had seen Dmytro Khyliuk on May 12, 2023, as they were both being transported from Novozybkov prison in Russia’s Bryansk region to a penal colony in the village of Pakino, several hundred kilometers east of Moscow.

Imprisonment seemed to have been “pretty rough on [Khyliuk] mentally but physically he looked fine,” the recently released person said, confirming that Khyliuk had spent at least three months in solitary confinement, as RSF already revealed.

"Vladimir Putin's regime does not even acknowledge holding him in its jails despite the many accounts collected by RSF attesting to his detention without any legal basis," RSF notes.

As reported earlier, the Russian invasion forces abducted an UNIAN news agency journalist Dmytro Khyliuk on March 3, 2022, in his native village of Kozarovychy, Kyiv region.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, said he was personally monitoring the issue of Khyliuk’s release from Russian captivity.