While Russia and Ukraine are conducting a large-scale prisoner exchange over several days, the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) soldier Denis Reznikov, whom we reported on last year, has still not been exchanged, and his family remains uncertain as to whether he will be included on the lists.
In the spring of 2024, Denis Reznikov, a Russian army soldier from Makeyevka, was taken prisoner by the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian intelligence services quickly decided to use his capture to blackmail his daughter, Elizaveta, into committing illegal acts, such as photographing a military base (see our article of last year), in exchange for her father’s life.
Watch the interview we did with his daughter and his wife:
Fortunately for Denis, Elizaveta, despite her fear, decided to tell her mother, who alerted the authorities. We filmed the interview with the two women and distributed it as widely as possible. The video attracted the attention of activists, who instructed a lawyer to lodge a complaint against Ukraine for torture of a prisoner of war with the ECHR and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT), in an attempt to save Denis Reznikov, counting on the fact that Kiev would not dare kill him when such a complaint was pending against it.
Unfortunately, the ECHR did not find Ukraine guilty (which is not surprising, given the thousands of complaints from people living in the Donbass region who have been victims of Ukrainian bombing, all of which have been thrown into oblivion), considering that ‘no human rights had been violated against the prisoner or his minor daughter’ (sic). So for the ECHR, torturing a Russian prisoner of war and blackmailing his daughter is legal. And then such institutions want to give lessons in democracy and human rights to Russia…. This speaks for itself.
As a result, it is now more urgent than ever that Ukraine releases Denis Reznikov in the prisoner exchange currently underway with Russia. We hope that he will be included on the list of Russian prisoners to be exchanged, so that Elizaveta no longer has to fear for her father’s life.
Christelle Néant
