Kharkiv teacher dies after inprisonment in occupied Crimea

Oleksandra Kazarovytska (Kolesnikova), co-founder of the Professional language school in Kharkiv, has died in occupied Crimea. The school reported her death on its Facebook page.

Her colleagues say that the Russian authorities have attributed her death to suicide.

This summer, Oleksandra Kazarovytska travelled to Sevastopol, where her parents live, to help them sell their flat and move. ‘She was detained there. They found correspondence between her and a volunteer dating back to the beginning of the full-scale invasion,’ the school’s post says. According to her colleagues, she spent three months in solitary confinement.

Oleksandra Kazarovytska was 44. According to her social media page, she was born in Sevastopol. ‘Sasha came from a military family and travelled all over the Soviet Union with her parents as a child. When her father retired, he chose to settle in Sevastopol. Sasha herself spent almost all her adult life in Kharkiv, where her grandmother lived,’ her colleagues write.

In 2004, she graduated from the School of Foreign Languages at V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University and went on to work as a teacher and translator. At Professional, she was director of studies. She is survived by her husband and daughter.