When silence becomes a weapon of fear: the enforced disappearances of women in Crimea 

Since the start of russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Crimean women have increasingly become victims of enforced disappearances due to expressed or fabricated pro-Ukrainian views. In many cases, women who have not shown any public activity were abducted – suspicion connected with someone “undesirable” or tacit disagreement were enough. This turns enforced disappearances into a tool of chaotic terror aimed at creating an atmosphere of fear and complete submission. 

Acts that were previously considered “unacceptable” even for the occupiers have today become commonplace: abductions, isolation, intimidation, pressure on families. Women, regardless of age or marital status, become victims of disappearances – even mothers of small children or elderly women. 

The case of the abduction of 60-year-old editor of a Crimean Tatar magazine, Ediie Muslimova, on November 21, 2024, in Simferopol is illustrative. She spent 35 hours in interrogation without sleep or rest. She was eventually released, but the very fact of her detention shows that there are no moral limits for the perpetrators of such actions.  

Representatives of the NGO “Crimean Process” have noticed a trend of increasing cases of forced disappearances among women: “There is a clearly visible growth only within Crimea. From 1 case in 2022 to 10 cases during 2024-2025. But if we look at the figures in other occupied regions, we see that the FSB is working at the same or even faster pace in the left bank of the Kherson region and in the Zaporizhzhia region”. 

The enforced disappearances of women are becoming part of a systemic repressive campaign aimed at suppressing dissent and demoralizing society. Lawyers defending political prisoners say that such actions are one of the methods of intimidating other women activists in Crimea.  

The occupation law enforcement agencies, which are formally supposed to protect the population of the occupied territories, are in fact the executors of repressive policies. In such conditions, families are forced to fight alone to find the truth. However, pressure is being exerted on the relatives of the abductees – they are being forced to refrain from publicity, refrain from contacting lawyers, and generally not to demand justice. Eventually, families lose faith in the possibility of protection and avoid publicity, while legal mechanisms actually do not work. 

The fate of women who have been subjected to enforced disappearance often remains unknown. According to the NGO “Crimean Process”, the fate of the victims of 7 out of 11 cases of enforced disappearances in Crimea is still unknown.  

The NGO noted that there are reasons to believe that they are being held incommunicado together with women who were abducted in the temporarily occupied territories of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolaiv regions. Three of them – Iryna Horobtsova, Olha Cherniavska and Anna Yeltsova – were found guilty of espionage last year, but at least three other women from the newly occupied regions have been held in russian captivity for over two years, even without charges or contact with their families. 

Abduction stories 

Iryna Danylovych 

The first case of forced disappearance of women in the territory of temporarily occupied Crimea was the abduction of Iryna Danylovych. She fought for justice, paying with her own freedom.  

When the russian federation occupied the Crimean Peninsula and began repressions, Iryna actively attended and documented court hearings in politically motivated cases against residents of Crimea. In addition, she fought corruption in the medical field. 

On April 29, 2022, the occupation special services searched the house of the activist’s parents. Iryna was abducted by russian security forces the same day she was returning home after a night shift at the hospital.  

The silence of the occupation law enforcement officers forced Iryna’s father, Bronislav Danylovych, to search for his daughter on his own. He managed to gain access to the video cameras of a gas station in Koktebel, which recorded the moment of the activist’s abduction. The video showed two men grabbing a nurse, dragging her into a car, and driving her in an unknown direction. Iryna’s whereabouts became known only two weeks later: she was being held in the FSB building.  

After that, the woman was sent to the Simferopol pre-trial detention centre, accused of “illegal acquisition, transfer, sale, storage, transportation, or carrying of explosives or explosive devices”. Later, the occupation court sentenced Iryna to 7 years in prison. 

In detention, the activist completely lost hearing in her left ear and has not received proper medical care. The journalist tried to obtain treatment by declaring a dry hunger strike until “the start of treatment or biological death” and later stopped due to the promise of the pre-trial detention centre management to take her to a clinic for examination and treatment.

Lera Dzhemilova 

Another victim of abduction was Lera Dzhemilova, a resident of the village of Krymka, Dzhankoi area. She was detained by FSB officers after a search in May 2024. 

Subsequently, “magistrate’s court” issued a ruling according to which Lera was arrested for 15 days for allegedly “refusing to undergo a drug test”. Then the FSB officers informed her sister that after serving her sentence, Dzhemilova would be taken to the FSB headquarters in Simferopol.  

Since then, for more than 10 months, nothing was known about Lera’s fate. In response to a lawyer’s request, the FSB department reported that criminal proceedings against Dzhemilova were not opened by the investigative authorities.  

“Crimean Process” notes that only a month after the Ukrainian media published information about Lera’s abduction, the FSB press service reported that they had detained an unnamed resident of the Dzhankoi area of the same year of birth as Lera, on charges of espionage.  

“According to established practice, the women are then transferred to another detention centre and allowed to inform their families about their stay”, – “Crimean process” reported. 

Tetiana Diakunovska and Liudmyla Kolesnikova 

NGO “Crimean Process” shared with us the story of another woman who was arrested by the occupation special services after a search on August 14, 2024.   

Tetiana Diakunovska was accused of allegedly committing “high treason” (Article 275 of the Criminal Code of the russian federation). However, in December 2024, Tetiana’s relatives did not know where she was, as the FSB and the Investigative Committee denied that they were investigating criminal cases against her.  

The fact that Diakunovska was being held in pre-trial detention centre-2 in Simferopol in complete isolation was reported by another victim of enforced disappearance, Liudmyla Kolesnikova, who came to her mother’s funeral and was detained by the FSB.  

Liudmyla was held in a pre-trial detention centre from July 28, 2024, to October 4, 2024, without a court decision or any other legal basis, without any charges being brought against her. During this time, she was not provided with hygiene products, and psychological and physical pressure was applied to force her to confess. The woman was later accused of “high treason”.   

Fiction of legality and intimidation 

Crimean lawyers highlight a certain pattern in the tactics of the occupying power structures and note that a missing person can be found only when all procedural actions are carried out in accordance with the law: drawing up a detention report, choosing a preventive measure by the court, bringing charges… If, during an abduction, a person is required to provide information through the use of illegal methods of investigation, the person will not be found until the operatives obtain the “necessary” information, and only then (the time frame differs in each case) a lawyer can be invited to provide “legality” to all further actions. 

If a person disappeared without the purpose of bringing him/her to justice, then regardless of public pressure, he/she would not be found, or he/she would be found under circumstances in which there is no trace of law enforcement involvement, because otherwise we could talk about illegal deprivation of liberty, abduction, etc., which in fact cannot be allowed in the current realities. 

Are the enforced disappearances of women and men different? 

At first glance, cases of enforced disappearances of women do not differ significantly from the same actions against men – in terms of motives, mechanics of abduction, or legal consequences – yet there are certain nuances in the treatment of women during unlawful detention. 

Since women are deprived of their liberty through enforced disappearance, almost nothing is known about the actual conditions of their detention and treatment. However, there is a well-known case of Iryna Danylovych, who testified that during her detention she was strangled, deprived of food, not allowed to use the toilet, and threatened with extrajudicial execution. Her story is one of the few that has become public, as most trials are held behind closed doors. 

Liudmyla Kolesnikova’s testimony about unbearable hygienic and living conditions is confirmed by other unofficial sources, which say that women are not provided with basic hygiene products, except for a small piece of laundry soap, their bedding is not changed for a long time, and access to water and shower is limited to once a week. Such conditions create additional physical and psychological suffering. 

In addition, most forced disappearances of women on the peninsula occurred after searches of their homes by occupation forces. The special services detain a person after a search, take to an unknown destination, and then his/her fate is unknown. 

How does the system cover up the disappearance of women? 

Families of missing women are seeking legal assistance from independent lawyers with complaints about the detention of victims of enforced disappearances without a trial or investigation.  

“An obstacle to documenting and investigating cases of enforced disappearances is often the confrontation between the defence and law enforcement agencies who later turn out to have had a direct connection to the disappearance. As well as the assistance of the courts in covering up the illegal actions of officials, impunity for the guilty”, – human rights activists say. 

In addition, the FSB does not provide any information about the abducted women. Cases when the occupation security services admit that a missing person is being held in their custody are very rare. However, even in this case, FSB officers refuse to indicate on what grounds the person was detained.  

Do russian law enforcement agencies provide any information about the missing? Lawyers note that initially the applications are either ignored or replies are sent stating that nothing is known about the disappearance of the person. Information may subsequently be sent that the person has been officially detained and is being held in custody based on a court decision. 

Enforced disappearances are one of the most brutal forms of intimidation and preventive terror, keeping the entire society in tension.  

The real victims of this war are not only the missing, but also their families, who are in obscurity and face hopelessness and fear for their loved ones every day.  

Enforced disappearances are a gross violation of international humanitarian law. Despite the fact that the russian federation is not a party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance or the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as an occupying power and a party to an international armed conflict, it is obliged to comply with the prohibition of enforced disappearances in accordance with the norms of customary international humanitarian law (in particular, rule 98), as well as under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

However, international protection mechanisms, unfortunately, do not work, and the law in the russian federation is a decoration for the arbitrariness of the security forces. That is why it is important to document every story, publicly announce every name, and remind the society that these people exist and are not forgotten. International solidarity and pressure on the aggressor state are actually the only tool in the fight for justice and an end to repression in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.