Media journalist Yana Suvorova held in russian captivity with convicts after suicide attempt

The morale of Yana Suvorova, a journalist from temporarily occupied Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia Region), illegally convicted in russia, deteriorated when she learned that she would be sentenced in temporarily occupied Donetsk, and because she was kept in a cell with prisoners who had attempted suicide.

Yana’s boyfriend, Oleksandr Nikolaienko, told ZMINA about this in an interview.

“When it became clear that Yana would be transferred to Donetsk and sentenced, her morale plummeted. It was especially difficult to be in Donetsk: she found herself among girls who had already attempted suicide, and this psychological pressure had a great impact on her,” Oleksandr explains. He suggests this could have been a pressure tactic to obtain consent to cooperate.

After the verdict was announced in the russian Southern District Military Court, the girl was sent to Remand Prison 2 in Taganrog. It was in this pre-trial detention center that russian correctional officers tortured journalist Victoria Roshchina.

The conditions in this detention center are even worse, Nikolaienko says: a cold, unsanitary cell, rats or mice, and even worse treatment from the staff.

Yana Suvorova was imprisoned when she was 18. Russian security forces claimed that the girl had allegedly collected information about the military and law enforcement officers through a social media chat that she administered. According to the russian version, the collected data helped launch a missile strike on their units in the Zaporizhzhia Region in February 2023. On October 23, 2025, the Southern District Military Court of Rostov-on-Don (russia) sentenced Yana to 14 years in prison. The media personality was found guilty under articles of the russian criminal code: Organization of a terrorist group and participation in it, Terrorist act, and Espionage.