Teacher from Ukraine’s Kharkiv dies in Russian custody in occupied Crimea. She was arrested while visiting her parents.

Oleksandra Kazarovytska (Kolesnikova), one of the founders of the Kharkiv-based language school “Professional,” has died in Russian-occupied Crimea, the school said on Facebook. The school said Russia “killed” Kazarovitskaya.Colleagues said Kazarovytska traveled to Sevastopol in the summer of 2026 to help her parents sell their apartment and move to Turkey, where she and her husband had been living.Authorities detained her after finding that she had been corresponding with a volunteer “since the start of the full-scale invasion.” Kazarovytska spent three months in solitary confinement awaiting trial. According to colleagues, Russian authorities attributed her death to suicide.Journalists and human rights activists believe Kazarovytska died in one of two pretrial detention centers in Simferopol.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.