Valentyn Vyhivskyi is one of the first political prisoners detained at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In 2014, Valentyn, a Maidan activist, was arrested by russian FSB officers in occupied Crimea. A year later, court found the Ukrainian guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 11 years in prison.For more than 8 years now, parents Petro and Halina have been fighting for the release of their son. The Association asked Petro Vyhivskyi whether he hoped for an exchange and whether he was able to contact his son after the beginning of the new stage of the war.

‍“The release of my son now depends entirely on the Ukrainian Armed Forces. If there are victories at the front, the conditions will improve and the release of political prisoners will be possible. Why do I not hope for an exchange? Because the Russian Federation does not need its own people. Russians taken hostage in Ukraine are waste material for their own government. All the same, for an exchange to be possible, the desire of both parties is required,” commented Petro.

Petro also added that the situation of political prisoners Shyptur and Zakhtei, who have served their sentences in full but have not yet returned home, does not convince in the possibility of exchange. Ukraine no longer has consuls in the Russian Federation, which means that diplomatic agreements are out of the question.“With the beginning of the Great war, it became more difficult to contact my son, as well as transfer money to him for him to buy food for himself. Our Valentyn is tall, so it is difficult for him to live on prison porridge only. Now we find opportunities to send him and receive letters from him which are heavily censored in roundabout ways.

After 5.5 years in solitary confinement, we managed to make conditions of Valentyn’s detention easier. Since 2021, he has been in the SCD (rus. “strict conditions of detention”), where several other prisoners share a room with him. They can read books and watch TV, which shows one channel. As far as I know, he is treated normally,” Petro told the Association.

According to Petro, he used to send his son clippings from the print media, articles by journalists and human rights activists about Valentyn for him to know that he is not forgotten in Ukraine. Now, due to strict censorship, this is impossible to do.