Stanislav Aseyev, Ukrainian novelist and journalist was born in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 1989 and has spent most of his life there. Graduated from Donetsk National Technical University in 2012, holds a master's degree in philosophy with honors.
After in 2014 Russia-backed terrorists had occupied the city, he stayed in Donetsk to report on the developments in the region under pen name Stanislav Vasin. In 2015 his reports was published by Ukrayinska Pravda. Between 2016 and 2017 he was a correspondent of Mirror Weekly, a notable Ukrainian newspaper where he published 14 articles. Also in 2016 — 2017 Aseyev create about 50 articles and photo-reports for Radio Liberty.
Finally, Stanislav was kidnapped by militants to be illegally imprisoned for 962 days. His confession in acting as a Ukrainian spy was received from him by force, after numerous tortures with electric shock.
Aseyev was charged with six articles for his publications that were seen by the so-called court as extremism activities. He received two court sentences — 15 years each.
Aseyev spent a considerable part of his illegal sentence in Donetsk iconic place — in a building of the factory that had been revitalized to serve between 2010 and 2014 as a platform for cultural initiatives called IZOLYATSIA. Since 2014 IZOLYATSIA’s territory of 7 ha. was converted by the militants to a secret prison and military base. Aseyev was among hundreds of other Ukrainians sent to this prison for fabricated cases.
Aseyev was freed as part of a bilateral release of prisoners between Ukraine and Russia in 2019. Immediately after his release, Stanislav was actively involved in writing a non-fiction book about the secret prison Izolyatsia, which has already been translated into a number of European languages. Thanks to Aseyev's public activities, most of the war criminals of Izolyatsia were identified. And the prison itself and the problem of torture in Donetsk managed to attract the attention of top politicians in the Western world.
At the moment, Stanislav, together with Radio Liberty and the Bellingket resource, is conducting an investigation to identify the rest of the still unidentified war criminals of the secret prison, as well as their curators from the Federal Security Service of Russia.
For his journalistic work in the conflict zone and describing war crimes, Stanislav Aseyev was awarded the Free Media Awards 2020, as well as the National Prize for the Defense of Freedom of Expression in Ukraine 2020 and Shevchenko National Prize 2021 — is the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture and arts awarded since 1961.