Kidnapped journalist from Genichesk sent by Russians to a colony more than 1,600 km from home

A political prisoner from Genichesk, journalist Gennady Osmak, has been in Russian captivity for almost 2 years. In December 2025, the court refused to reduce his prison term.

Gennady Osmak is the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Genichesk online publication “New Visit”. After the occupation in 2022, he was forced to stop the site, but he himself remained in Genichesk. In March 2024, Russian security forces kidnapped Osmak after a denunciation – he was accused of participating in the Noman Chelebidzhikhan battalion.

In August of the same year, the occupation Genichesk District Court sentenced the detained journalist to 3 years and 2 months in a maximum-security colony.

It is known that Gennady Osmak is now far from Ukraine, more than 1,600 kilometers from Genichesk – in a strict regime colony No. 6 in the village of Melekhove, Vladimir region of the Russian Federation. For more than a year after his imprisonment, the Russians held the journalist in a pre-trial detention center in the village of Chongar. This is not far from Genichesk, so the family was able to give him medicine, since Gennady has diabetes and serious problems with his spine.

However, upon arrival at the colony, everything was taken from the man, including medicine. Whether he has access to the necessary treatment today is unknown. In December 2025, it became known that the cassation instance of the Russian Federation refused to reduce Osmak’s term of imprisonment, leaving the decision to serve his sentence in a strict regime colony in force. The lawyer of the illegally imprisoned person will try to achieve his transfer closer to Crimea or the Krasnodar Territory.

“Now there is only one task – for him to survive. He has a little more than a year left. What his loved ones are going through is incomparable to what he himself is going through,” the publication’s interlocutor said.

Immediately after the occupation, the Genichesk special service of the Russian Federation offered Gennady Osmak cooperation – to promote Russian propaganda through the website. He refused. He was forced to stay at home, not even go outside. The journalist’s name was on the lists of those who were banned from leaving by the Russians, so he could not leave the occupied territory.

In 2024, in order to survive, Gennady Osmak began working part-time as a taxi driver. In January, he got into a minor traffic accident during curfew. The next day, they came to search him, took him to the basement and tortured him, and eventually released him.

The journalist was detained for the second time on March 6, 2024 – he was kidnapped right on the street, and a video of the “harsh detention” was filmed. Since then, he has been in captivity.