Aseyev Stanislav

Born on 1 October 1989 in Donetsk. In 2010, he graduated from Donetsk State Institute of Informatics and Artificial Intelligence (Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies); in 2012, he obtained a master’s degree at the Department of Computer Technologies of the Donetsk National Technical University.

Under the pseudonym of ‘Stanislav Vasin’ during the occupation of Donetsk, he was writing for Ukrainian media such as: Ukrainian Weekly, Weekly Mirror, Ukrainska Pravda; prepared radio reportage for Radio Donbass.Realities project of the Ukrainian Service of RFE/RL, published blogs on Facebook where he had about 5k followers. Dozens of media were citing these materials as a source of information about life in occupied localities.

He was captured as a hostage by the ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’ (the ‘DPR’) pro-Russian militia group in May or June 2017 (on June 2, the editorial office received the last material from him; the next day, his mother informed Stanislav’s classmate Yehor Firsov about her son’s disappearance).

However, according to the subsequent evidence from a hostage released on exchange, Aseyev was detained earlier, on May 10, and since then has been kept in the ‘DPR’s’ ‘Ministry of the State Security’ basement, where he was tortured. His writing pieces and correspondence were controlled by militants. In July 2017, the ‘DPR’ acknowledged Aseyev’s detention; his exchange has been negotiated since then.

He was released as part of a prison exchange on 29 December 2019.