Iryna Dovhan and a native of Yasynuvata, who was abducted in 2014 by pro-Russian insurgents of the Vostok Battalion. She says that she was beaten and humiliated for five days. According to her testimony, she was held in jail and interrogated before being handed over to mercenaries, apparently from North Ossetia, who subjected her to torture, calling her a fascist and forcing her to shout "Sieg Heil", repeatedly shooting pistols next to her ears and threatening to rape her. She was freed on August 28 after, Mark Franchetti, a reporter for the British newspaper The Sunday Times, and Dmitry Beliakov, a Russian freelance photographer, pleaded with leader Alexander Khodakovsky to release her. Khodakovsky ordered Iryna Dovhan freed and vowed to discipline those responsible for her detention and public humiliation. She has since left Donetsk and joined her family in Mariupol, a city controlled by Ukrainian forces.
She became famous after photos of her made by Maurício Lima appeared in social and international media, showing her standing at a busy intersection in downtown Donetsk holding a sign identifying her as a spy and reading: "She kills our children". She says passers-by slapped and kicked her, spit on her and hurled tomatoes at her face. A photograph of her mistreatment stirred widespread outrage in Ukraine, prompted a social media effort to identify her and drew the attention of United Nationshuman rights monitors. The insurgents who abducted her are associated with the Vostok Battalion, led by former SBU operative Alexander Khodakovsky, accused her for being a spy and an artillery observer for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Iryna Dovhan insists that never was a spy, but she freely admits to being a volunteer who collected donations from locals and delivered them to Ukrainian soldiers stationed nearby. She also says she wasn't the only person in Donetsk who wanted to help Ukrainian soldiers, through these donations. She says she made a fateful mistake when she took photos of soldiers receiving the collections, with the intention of showing them to people who donated the supplies. In her interviews to Hromadske.tv and Radio Liberty, she confessed that if it would be for those pictures, she might not have ever see her family again. Later, Ukrainian television program "Vikna" filmed an exclusive interview of her and her family who all now live at hers friend. She met, thanked and hugged the photographer Maurício Lima, whose photograph drew wide attention to her plight.
Iryna Dovhan is a professional beautician, a native of Yasynuvata and, until recently, a resident of the town. She studied economics and owned a beauty salon in her hometown, which was taken by rebels in April. She is married and has a 16-year-old daughter and a 32-year-old son.
