Ukrainian · b. 1989
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer and journalist born in Donetsk. After Russia-backed separatists took control of the city in 2014, he stayed and reported on life under occupation, publishing under the pseudonym Stanislav Vasin for outlets including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Ukrainian Week. In 2017 separatist security forces arrested him and accused him of spying. He spent more than two years in detention, about 28 months of it in the Izolyatsia prison in Donetsk, where he was tortured. He was freed in December 2019 in a prisoner exchange between Ukraine and the separatist authorities. His books include In Isolation: Dispatches from Donbas and The Torture Camp on Ruins Street, published in German as Heller Weg. He also wrote the novel Melancholia and a collection of essays on occupied Donbas. His work documents conditions in the secret prisons of the occupied territories and gives one of the few firsthand accounts of them. He has received Ukrainian and international awards, including the Ivan Franko Prize and the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent shortlist recognition.