In the hell of Russian prisons

On February 24, 2022, Maxime Boutkevitch, then aged 45, is a prominent figure in Ukraine, thanks to his dual role as journalist (after working for the Ukrainian section of the BBC World Service in London in the early 2000s, he returned to the country where, in 2013, he founded the very popular Hromadske.ua media outlet) and human rights defender. He also runs a major NGO helping people fleeing the Donbass, which has been under Russian control since 2014. But that day, his life, like that of all his compatriots, turned upside down: Russia had just launched its full-scale invasion. Despite his pacifist convictions, Boutkevitch immediately volunteered to join the Ukrainian armed forces. Once at the front, he was quickly given command of a platoon. In June 2022, his unit was captured by Russian forces. The Russians were ecstatic: with Boutkevitch, they had captured a famous prisoner. The Putin regime's media had a field day, accusing him of imaginary war crimes. His conditions of detention are appalling. Under pressure, he was forced to "confess", filmed by Russian TV cameras, to crimes he could not possibly have committed.

In March 2023, he was tried before the "Supreme Court" of Lugansk, a city occupied by Russia since 2014 and capital of the puppet "Lugansk People's Republic" (annexed by Moscow in 2022 after a parody of a referendum). After a sham trial, he was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment. He did not serve his full sentence, far from it: on October 18, 2024, he was released as part of a vast prisoner exchange. Back in Kiev, he resumed his advocacy work for human rights, especially those of people like himself returning from captivity.

On September 29, 2025, he was awarded the thirteenth Václav Havel Human Rights Prize, which recognizes outstanding actions by civil society in defense of human rights. The award was presented at a special ceremony held on the opening day of the autumn plenary session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg.

S. K.

Sasha Kulaeva -Your capture, detention, subsequent trial and exchange have generated a considerable amount of rumor and interpretation. How did you deal with this succession of events?

Maxim Boutkevitch - I joined the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a volunteer on February 24, 2022. My motivations were both circumstantial and more fundamental. The circumstantial reasons were simple: I was in my hometown, Kiev. The fighting was already raging on the outskirts. I realized I had only two options: flee or defend the city. I chose the latter.

Another, deeper motivation was linked to the fact that, as a citizen, I have a duty to protect my country against the actions of any state that wants to destroy or subjugate it. I refuse to see Ukraine fall under the yoke of the Russian Federation.

But other considerations also came into play: for over fifteen years, I had been working primarily in the defense of human rights. And although the situation in Ukraine was far from ideal, we had made significant progress. I realized that all this progress would be wiped out in the event of a Russian victory, because there is no defense of human rights, or human rights at all, in the territories controlled by Russia. For me, taking up arms meant not only fulfilling my duty as a citizen, but also continuing my work as a defender of human rights against an aggressor state that places no value on them and systematically violates them on a massive scale.

Before being taken prisoner, I served in the armed forces for three and a half months, from March 4, 2022 to June 21, 2022. During these three and a half months, I only took part in active combat for about two weeks. First in the spring of 2022, during the liberation of the Kiev region from Russian occupation; then on the front in the Lugansk region, just before my capture.

S. K. - Could you briefly describe what happened at the precise moment you were taken prisoner?

M. B. - In mid-June 2022, we were ordered to deploy to eastern Ukraine to reinforce our units there. After some time, we arrived in the Lugansk region, in the village of Myrna Dolyna, which was being methodically shelled by Russian artillery.

The next day, my subordinates and I - I was platoon commander at the time - were sent to an observation post with the mission of monitoring and reporting any enemy movements near a strategic road linking Severodonetsk and Lyssychansk to the north, and Hirske and Zolote to the south. Our orders were not to engage in combat without specific instructions. Russian forces began jamming radio communications, leaving us without a link, then very quickly without water. Promised supplies of water and ammunition never arrived.

We had decided to abandon the observation post when we finally received a radio message from a soldier in a nearby Ukrainian battalion. He told us that the Russians had surrounded the whole area, but that the …