12 years in jail for donations to Prytula Foundation. The story of teenager from Donetsk Oblast imprisoned in Russia

"I guessed who these people were and what they were capable of"

The Yefimovs are from Snizhne, a mining town 80 kilometers east of Donetsk that has been occupied since 2014. After the outbreak of hostilities, the family briefly left Donetsk Oblast. But when they returned, it was mostly "quiet" in Snizhne, Kyrylo recalls.

As a child, Danylo was involved in Greco-Roman wrestling. Due to his injury and the war, his hobbies changed: he started drawing, writing poetry, and carving wood. Despite the occupation and the position of his parents, who insisted on acquiring Russian citizenship, the boy retained his pro-Ukrainian views.

"After the full-scale invasion, Danylo switched to the Ukrainian language in communication with his family and friends. Of course, he did not make any public statements because it could be dangerous," Kyrylo says.

Danylo remotely graduated from high school in the government-controlled area. He considered higher education institutions in Ukraine and Poland, but did not have time to apply. So, at his father's request, he went to study at the Southern Federal University in Rostov. He planned to enter Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv in 2024.

After the outbreak of the full-scale war, Kyrylo left home and went to Turkiye, while Danylo stayed with his family in Snizhne. In December 2023, Danylo, his girlfriend and father wanted to fly to Istanbul to visit his brother. He planned to renew his Ukrainian passport and thought about moving out of the occupation. But everything went wrong.

Danylo didn't want to use his Russian passport, so he traveled with his Ukrainian passport on principle. This was the reason for his detention at the airport in Volgograd. The boy's father and girlfriend were not informed of the incident.

"As soon as I showed my documents, they took me for interrogation. They asked for the number of my family. I opened my phone to find it and immediately heard: ‘What are you turning away over there?’ and the phone was snatched from my hands. I was scared, because I guessed who these people were and what they were capable of," Yefimov writes from prison.

Russian security forces found bank transfers in the smartphone. They asked what they were for and who they were for. At that time, 18-year-old Danylo tried not to answer them, but he finally confessed because of threats.

Meanwhile, Danylo's father and girlfriend stayed in Volgograd to look for a lawyer. Kyrylo believes that the lawyer they found turned out to be a sham, as he forced the girl to go to an "interrogation" where the Russians tried to extract "testimony" about the "crime" from her, although it was not necessary.

"I lied to the last. I said it was for humanitarian aid for civilians. In the evening, they let me go to the hotel. The next day, under the pretext of signing some documents, I was handed over to two policemen. Without explanation, they threw me into a dark room that looked like a basement," Danylo recalls.

The Russian police drew up a report against Danylo for allegedly using profanity in the police station. The court sent him to custody for 13 days. The security forces did not immediately admit that they were holding the student while his family tried to find him.

Then the arrest was extended for another 10 days, allegedly for hooliganism. Danylo called these charges fictitious.

"Such groundless and consecutive arrests are called 'carousel arrests' – they are used by security forces to gain time and prepare materials for criminal proceedings. They have not yet come up with another 'legal' way to detain a person," the Russian human rights organization Department One explains.

"When someone bathed above, we were flooded"

In the Volgograd pre-trial detention facility, he was given bed linen with holes and had to sleep on the floor of his cell because there was not enough space, he says in his letters. Later, he was moved to a special block, in complete isolation, so that no one could see the "traitors" and "khokhols" who "do not exist" there.

"Soon we were transferred to 'our place' – the basement. The window there was bricked up, there was almost no light, the walls were covered with mold, and some walls were knocked down. When someone was bathing upstairs, it was literally raining and flooding us," Danylo describes the conditions of detention.

One cellmate liked to sing Ukrainian songs. For this, he was severely beaten, while others were "slightly kicked in the sides." Then they took him to an office, put a bag over his head, and forced him to shout "Glory to Russia" in front of a portrait of Vladimir Putin. They beat him, strangled him with a bag, and forced him to learn the Russian national anthem. After that, the prisoners had to sing it every day, so that everyone could hear it.

Even before the "investigation" began, Danylo was once forced to sign a confession. He refused, demanding to talk to a lawyer beforehand. Then a man came into the office and introduced himself as a "Wagnerite".

"'Dialogue' began with blows, swearing and threats to take me to the forest, where I would sign everything they told me to. We were already walking to the exit to go to the forest, but instead I was abruptly thrown into a cage, and they left," the guy writes.

He did not understand what was happening. Everything was decided by the lawyer and his father, who chose the line of defense of "sincere remorse" to commute the sentence. The teenager was transferred to Rostov.

"Misconceptions about the Armed Forces of Ukraine"

During the hearing in the Rostov Oblast Court, Danylo's dormitory neighbor Vyacheslav Nikiforov took the stand. He claimed that Yefimov "constantly emanated negativity": he called Russia the aggressor, accused it of committing crimes against civilians, and criticized Putin.

Lyudmila Zaitseva, the curator of Danilov's group at the university, stated that the teenager "categorically refused to participate in patriotic events and educational programs." In particular, they concerned "the importance of knowing the history of Russia."

The "verdict" allegedly quoted Danylo as saying that after the outbreak of the full-scale war, he was constantly stressed because he read Ukrainian news about the crimes of Russians and heard it from relatives who were in the government-controlled territory of Ukraine.

"Under the influence of these publications and the data obtained, he (Danylo - ed.) formed a false idea about the Ukrainian Armed Forces, their actions, and the need to support the Ukrainian army financially," the case file states.

In July 2024, Danylo was sent to a strict regime colony for "treason".

How Russians illegally imprison civilians

Yelyzaveta Sokurenko, head of the war crimes documentation department at the ZMINA Human Rights Center, noted in a comment to hromadske that Ukrainian human rights activists are aware of other similar cases where Russians "fabricate" "treason" for Ukrainians. For example, in June 2023, the Russian military detained two young men in Donetsk, accusing them of collaborating with and assisting the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

"This is one of the most common articles under which Russians initiate criminal proceedings against civilian Ukrainians. In particular, those who were forced to obtain a Russian passport because of their life under occupation," says Sokurenko.

With the outbreak of the all-out war, the number of proceedings under articles on terrorism, espionage and treason fabricated by Russians against Ukrainians has increased rapidly. While in 2022, 500 cases were known from various sources, by the end of 2024, there were about 5,000 (in almost three years).

The human rights activist notes that the courts are biased in favor of the prosecution, and the defendants "plead guilty" under torture or threats of further torture. The systematic abuse of the judicial process by the Russians can be considered not only a war crime, but also a crime against humanity.

"There is no procedure for returning arbitrarily imprisoned civilians to the government-controlled territory of Ukraine. Most of these people are held in detention facilities without any charges, and neither the International Committee of the Red Cross nor international missions have access to them," explains Sokurenko.

She noted that although civilians illegally imprisoned by the Russians have been returned to Ukraine during prisoner exchanges, their number is small – 168 people since 2022. In October 2024, a representative of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Oleh Slobodyanyk, said that there could be more than 14,000 civilians in Russian captivity, but only 1,300 have been confirmed.

In a comment to hromadske, Yevgeny Smirnov, a lawyer of the Russian human rights organization Department One, said that he was helping Danylo Yefimov, including consulting his relatives who live in Russia and looking for a lawyer for Danylo's case. According to Smirnov, there are several human rights projects and lawyers in Russia who are ready to take on cases involving Ukrainians.

***

"This situation has changed me a lot. The main thing is to remain human. Because there were our fellow Ukrainians who did not behave in a very kind way. I learned to help, to give my last, to defend myself, and to fight. Yes, at first I left everything to the lawyer, but if I had been brave from the beginning, would I be able to write this now? I don't know.

Let me also brag:) I was lucky enough to visit a dungeon built by Catherine the Great!!! And the most amazing thing is that nothing has changed here. Everything is the same, both inside and outside. A loop of time. But, unfortunately, I'm not on a tour…:) As you can see, I'm in a good mood:) But not always.

Usually, I'm very sad, I miss you and I want to go home. And when? In a year or in 12? It makes me miss you even more. I pray to God and hope for his mercy. Mostly, it's like that."

(From Danylo’s letter).