Museums in Ukraine and Poland have asked for international help in securing the release of art scholar Olena Pekh, who has reportedly been held captive and tortured in Russia-occupied Donbas, Ukraine, for the last two and a half years. Pekh, a 49-year-old research fellow at the Horlivka Museum of Fine Arts, in eastern Ukraine, was apprehended by Russian rebels on 9 August 2018 while visiting her sick mother. She was accused of treason and espionage and sentenced to 13 years behind bars in what the Ukrainian National Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM Ukraine) says was a sham trial.
Russia's War Against Ukraine
The Art Newspaper: Ukrainian art scholar reportedly tortured and imprisoned by Russian forces
Members of a Cossack unit aligned with Russia-backed separatists near a bridge over the river Donets in Stanytsia Luhanska, just north of Luhansk, eastern Ukraine, March 13, 2015.
