Kharkiv teacher Oleksandra Kazarovytska died in Vladikavkaz, not in occupied Crimea

The body of Oleksandra Kazarovytska was found in a private residence in Vladikavkaz. Ukraine’s public broadcaster Suspilne and Novaya Gazeta Europe have published reports on what is known about the death of the Kharkiv-based English teacher, who was detained by the Russian authorities in the summer and found dead in October.

Last week, we reported Kazarovytska’s death, having learned of it from a post on the Facebook page of the Professional language school. The post read: ‘In the summer she went to Sevastopol for no more than a month to help her parents sell their flat and move. Sasha was due to return home in September. She was detained there. They found correspondence with a volunteer dating back to the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Then three months in solitary confinement. Waiting for trial. And then “suicide”.’

We wrongly assumed that Kazarovytska had been detained in Crimea, transferred to a remand prison in connection with a criminal case and died there. However, this was not explicitly stated in the post. We apologise to our readers.

The Professional language school has also amended its post: ‘We want to correct a mistake in our post in memory of Sasha and sincerely apologise for the inaccuracy. Relying on a post by her friend, who wrote that Sasha had been buried in Sevastopol, we wrongly reported that she had reached Sevastopol and been detained there. As Suspilne journalists have established, Sasha never made it to Crimea. She was arrested on the way, and her body was subsequently brought to Sevastopol.’

What is now known about the circumstances of Oleksandra Kazarovytska’s death

• Kazarovytska held Russian citizenship. Novaya Gazeta Europe, citing her friend Iryna Salnyk, reports that she was travelling to renew her documents, something Russian citizens are currently unable to do in Ukraine. ‘As we understand it, she was travelling to Crimea via Russia and was detained near the Russian border,’ Viktoriia Nesterenko, a project manager at the Human Rights Centre ZMINA, told Suspilne.

• There is no public information about where or how Kazarovytska was detained after her phone was examined, whether she was formally charged or where exactly she was held. Nesterenko says, however, that Kazarovytska’s husband ‘was in contact with her while she was being held, and they were able to communicate’. According to Nesterenko, the family did not inform Ukrainian human rights defenders of her detention, possibly for fear that doing so would make matters worse.

• Kazarovytska died in Vladikavkaz, Iryna Salnyk told Novaya Gazeta Europe. Another friend, Anna Zelenska-Sumkina, told the newspaper that ‘Oleksandra was found hanged’. According to Zelenska-Sumkina, ‘she was no longer in a remand prison at the time, but in a private residence, something like house arrest’. Her date of death is officially given as 24 October.

• Oleksandra Kazarovytska was buried in her home town of Sevastopol on 3 November.

Oleksandra Kazarovytska (née Kolesnikova) was 44. Her father was a Soviet serviceman. 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. She co-founded the Professional language school, where she was director of studies. As a student, Kazarovytska was active in an evangelical church. She later became a follower of Tibetan Buddhism. She is survived by her husband and daughter.