Polina Uzhvak - IStories

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Author

Polina Uzhvak

Author materials

After being released from prisons in Russia, Ukrainian citizens are indefinitely kept in practical captivity. IStories managed to talk to them

20 May

Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva

Never-ending Prison

What we know about the student recruitment campaign and how to avoid it

3 March

Polina Uzhvak, Lena Lemyasova

Students Recruited to War in Universities and Colleges All Over Russia

Over the past three years, Russia has almost completed the development of a digital registry that can be used for a new and more effective war mobilization campaign, storing data on 25 million citizens who can potentially be drafted. IStories examined the data shared by the hackers who attacked the registry key developer

22 December

Polina Uzhvak, Sonya Savina, Egor Feoktistov, Rina Nikolaeva

What We Learned from a Hacker Attack on the Russian Military Registry Developer

What else can we learn from the Russian court rulings data from the first half of 2025?

21 October

Sonya Savina, Rina Nikolaeva, Polina Uzhvak

Russia Breaks “Treason” Sentences Record, Publishes Data on How Many Criminals Escaped Punishment by Going to War

From July to September 2025, courts in Russia’s so-called new territories imposed sentences in this category of cases every three days. Teenagers, pensioners, women, and even entire families have fallen victim to the repression

13 October

Polina Uzhvak, Sonya Savina, Rina Nikolaeva

People Kidnapped and Sentenced with “Espionage” and “Treason” in Occupied Territories of Ukraine

One in four was killed, went missing, or was wounded. IStories analyzed the full list of those mobilized from Tomsk Oblast and reports on what three years of mobilization have looked like through the lens of a single Russian region

19 September

Sonya Savina, Egor Feoktistov, Polina Uzhvak

Three Years of Mobilization: What One Region — and the Whole Russia — Has Endured

83% of them were enrolled without taking exams or would not have been admitted without a quota because their scores were below the passing threshold

5 August

Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva, Sonya Savina

In 2025, Nearly 3,000 Russian Troops Who Had Fought in Ukraine, and Their Children, Were Admitted to Top Russian Universities Through Quotas. That’s One and a Half Times More Than Last Year

This practice is being implemented in at least one region of Russia. Lawyers say it is illegal

27 June

Polina Uzhvak, Sonya Savina

Prospective Foster Parents Now Required to Provide Certificate of “No Sex Change”

Vladimir Putin has ordered residents of the occupied territories to legalize their status by September 10, or else they will be deported. In reality, Ukrainians whom the occupation authorities have deemed a “security threat” have long been expelled from their homes and abandoned at the border with Georgia. Here are their stories

23 May

Rina Nikolaeva, Polina Uzhvak, Irina Dolinina

Deportation From the Occupation

Journalists from six countries have united to investigate the death of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna. In the summer of 2023, she organized a trip to the territories occupied by Russia to locate places where abducted Ukrainians were being held and disappeared herself. A year and a half later, her body was repatriated with signs of torture

29 April

Polina Uzhvak, Irina Dolinina, Rina Nikolaeva

Ghost Detainees. The Story of Viktoriia Roshchyna

The Judicial Department at the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has published new data on the number and composition of convicted individuals. The IStories data team explains what has become known from this data

18 April

Sonya Savina, Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva, Egor Feoktistov

How and for What Russians Are Judged in 2024

They offloaded hundreds of thousands of tons of petroleum products onto vessels involved in exporting from Russia in circumvention of sanctions

28 January

At Least 11 Volgoneft Type Tankers Went to Sea With the Same Violations as Those That Sank in December

Leonid Popov was kidnapped, tortured and held for a year and a half without charges. Now he faces up to 20 years in prison. He disappeared in April 2023, all this time the law enforcers denied that they were holding him

29 November

Rina Nikolaeva, Polina Uzhvak

The FSB Accused a Resident of Melitopol with Severe Mental Disorders of Espionage

More than a thousand Russian servicemen of the 20th Motorized Rifle Division went AWOL, IStories found out. What happened to them?

19 November

Irina Dolinina, Polina Uzhvak

A Runaway Regiment

Exclusive

The Traitors, The Spies, The Terrorists

Russian courts break the record for state treason convictions, and the number of convicted military personnel continues to rise: the IStories data team research on the convictions in Russia for the first half of 2024

The Traitors, The Spies, The Terrorists

Exclusive

Russian Soldiers Have Become More Likely to Receive Real Sentences as Punishment

Almost half of the convicted servicemen were sentenced to real imprisonment, whereas earlier their share did not exceed one third. The damage caused by military crimes has increased more than 30 times

Russian Soldiers Have Become More Likely to Receive Real Sentences as Punishment

How Russian military personnel who have returned from war live and what they think about

27 April

What It Is Like to Live After the War Front

How the kidnapping, torture and terror is organized in the center of Ukrainian guerrilla resistance — Russian-occupied Melitopol

3 October

Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva

“You Will Die and No One Will Know”

IStories talked to the Wagner mercenaries

24 August

Maria Zholobova, Anastasia Korotkova, Polina Uzhvak, Elizaveta Dobrovinskaya, Alisa Kuznetsova

What Is the Future of Wagner Group after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Death

A disabled Ukrainian man was nearly tortured to death in occupied Melitopol. Now he’s back in Russian captivity

14 August

Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva

“Mom, I Went to Hell”

When Western European markets stopped buying Russian timber, Russia’s largest logging company scrapped environmental protections

20 April

Wartime Ecology

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The Case of Russian Censorship

IStories uncovered that Russia’s main censor Roskomnadzor monitors Russian protests every day: in which regions people are protesting, about what issues, and whether these scattered actions may turn into large-scale riots

22 March

Irina Dolinina, Polina Uzhvak

There Are No Protests in Russia? Yet Roskomnadzor Found Them!

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The Case of Russian Censorship

Who found themselves in Roskomnadzor, the main Russian censor’s, sights, and why: potential “foreign agents”, opinion leaders, the media, tech giants, messaging apps and those close to powerful people. Enemies are blocked, while loyalists are saved from unflattering publications

8 February

Alesya Marokhovskaya, Polina Uzhvak, Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Irina Dolinina, Sonya Savina, Rina Nikolaeva

The All-Seeing State Eye

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The Case of Russian Censorship

Roskomnadzor plans to arrange total surveillance of the entire Russian-speaking internet using artificial intelligence. Is it possible?

8 February

Alesya Marokhovskaya, Irina Dolinina, Sonya Savina, Editors, Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Polina Uzhvak

Inside the Censorship Machine

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The Case of Russian Censorship

Russia’s main censor — Roskomnadzor — secretly monitors publications critical of Russian authorities on the internet. They generate reports that they then send to the security forces. What does it mean for Russian citizens?

8 February

Katya Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Irina Dolinina, Polina Uzhvak, Alesya Marokhovskaya, Sonya Savina, Anastasia Korotkova, Rina Nikolaeva

How Roskomnadzor Protects Putin's Power

IStories spoke with relatives of three dead, recently mobilized soldiers. They discussed why their loved ones decided “not to run” and go to war — and whether they consider this choice to have been the right one

28 December

Polina Uzhvak, Rina Nikolaeva

Until Death Convinces Us

Every day Marina searches for medication so that her father does not lose his ability to speak and can get out of bed. It is not always possible to find medications. One family’s story illustrates how sick people in the occupied territories survive

18 July

Stroke amidst the War

What Russian troops did in Bucha and other cities near Kyiv. Testimonies from local residents who survived the “special military operation”

6 April

Editors, Polina Uzhvak, Ekaterina Fomina

“They Just Came, Killed a Bunch of People, Destroyed the City and Left”

Why do many Russians limit themselves in food, clothing and medication despite an officially low level of poverty? An explainer by IStories

9 September

“The Tragic Disparity between What People Have and What They Consider Normal”

IStories studied data on air pollution in Russia and investigated how the state “enhances” official statistics on harmful emissions while millions of Russians die because of poor ecology

5 August

Why the Russian Environmental Monitoring System Does Not Work