{"id":207371,"date":"2025-06-23T10:01:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T10:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/207371\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T10:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T10:01:09","slug":"a-ukrainian-journalist-is-released-from-russian-custody-in-occupied-crimea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/207371\/","title":{"rendered":"A Ukrainian journalist is released from Russian custody in occupied Crimea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ukrainian Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty<\/a> journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko<\/a> was released Sunday after more than four years in Russian custody in Crimea, according to RFE\/RL.<\/p>\n

Yesypenko was arrested and jailed on March 10, 2021, in Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia<\/a> in 2014, on suspicion of gathering intelligence for Ukraine, a charge he denied.<\/p>\n

In February 2022, a Russian-installed court in Crimea sentenced the dual Russian-Ukrainian citizen to six years on espionage charges that he, his employer and rights groups said were fabricated. Months later, he was also charged with possessing explosives \u2014 a claim he denies. Prosecutors later acknowledged the grenade found in his car did not bear his fingerprints.<\/p>\n

The top Moscow-controlled court in Crimea later reduced Yesypenko\u2019s sentence to five years. During his trial, he testified that he was tortured with electric shocks to extract a false confession.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor more than four years, Vlad was arbitrarily punished for a crime he did not commit. He paid too high of a price for reporting the truth about what was taking place inside Russia-occupied Crimea,\u201d RFE\/RL chief executive Stephen Capus said, adding that Yesypenko had been \u201ctortured, physically and psychologically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Capus thanked the U.S. and Ukrainian governments for \u201cworking with us to ensure that Vlad\u2019s unjust detention was not prolonged.\u201d <\/p>\n

In a post on Telegram, Ukrainian presidential aide Andriy Yermak thanked everyone who helped secure Yesypenko\u2019s release.<\/p>\n

He was freed shortly after longtime RFE\/RL correspondent Ihar Karnei was released from prison in Belarus<\/a>, following a rare visit by a senior U.S. official.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ukrainian Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty journalist Vladyslav Yesypenko was released Sunday after more than four years in Russian…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[83246,3907,2002,2000,299,4179,7147,21903,7136,53,657,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-207371","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-83246","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-espionage","11":"tag-eu","12":"tag-europe","13":"tag-general-news","14":"tag-indictments","15":"tag-journalism","16":"tag-legal-proceedings","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-ukraine","19":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114732104894719350","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}