On September 18, it marks 10 years since the illegal imprisonment of Valentyn Vyhivskyi by Russian occupiers.

Valentyn Vyhivskyi was born on August 3, 1983, in the city of Prypiat, Kyiv region. After the Chornobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, he moved with his family to Kyiv. He graduated from the Faculty of Electronics at Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, was passionate about aviation, and actively participated in the Euromaidan movement.

On September 17, 2014, Valentyn traveled to occupied Crimea for one day. He had a return ticket and was bringing money to an acquaintance who needed financial help for her grandfather’s treatment.

The FSB officers of the occupation authorities illegally detained Vyhivskyi. He was accused of allegedly “collecting and transmitting classified information about Russian military aircraft engines to a representative of China.” According to Valentyn, during his detention, he was tortured: beaten, had a bag placed over his head, stripped, and subjected to a mock execution near a freshly dug grave in the forest.

On December 15, 2015, the court of occupiers sentenced him to 11 years in prison on fabricated charges of “espionage.” For most of this term, Valentyn was held in solitary confinement in a punishment cell, and for the past five years, he has been held in a correctional colony in Russia’s Kirov region.

“Here, I developed a real hatred for Russia. And mostly not because I ended up in this situation, but because of the atmosphere of complete lies and hypocrisy, arrogance, and malice here,” Valentyn writes in a letter to his family.