“They are waiting for me to die”. Crimean political prisoner Lenur Khalilov was released because of his cancer—and then returned to prison

20 August 2025

On this day, the Isakogorsky District Court of Arkhangelsk released Lenur Khalilov from the penal colony due to liver cancer; stage IV oncology is included in the list of diagnoses that preclude the serving of a sentence. According to the human rights movement Crimean Solidarity, the court based its decision on the article regarding “release from punishment due to illness.”

According to Khalilov’s wife, Umida Khudoyberdieva, following the court’s decision, Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) officers purchased a train ticket for her husband to annexed Crimea, with a transfer in Moscow. He traveled home alone, without an escort.

23 August 2025

Umida didn’t see her husband for seven years. On the platform, Khalilov was met by his brothers, while she waited at home. Khalilov appeared on the doorstep with a colorful bouquet of flowers—the woman still keeps it, even though it dried out long ago.

“I didn't believe my husband was coming,” she says. “I only believed it when he was standing in the doors.”

24 August 2025

The next day, several hundred people arrived at the Khalilovs’ home to welcome the former imam back.

“It was like a wedding,” says Khudoyberdieva. “A huge celebration—people came from all over Crimea. We set up tables in the street and cooked pilaf in a large pot. Everyone here knows him; all the Muslims know him. And so they came, women with flowers, men with gifts. Everyone was there—the elderly, the young...”

Towards evening, the woman noticed that her husband was exhausted.

“He had always been a very active man, always trying to stay busy,” recalls Umida. “But then I saw him just lying there. I asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘My liver hurts, my whole body hurts—I have no strength left.’”

September 2025

Khalilov’s family insisted he be hospitalized. He was diagnosed with stage II liver cancer. Over the course of a month, he underwent two rounds of chemotherapy and “started to bounce back a little,” his wife says.

Back home, Khalilov told his wife that he had been diagnosed with Hepatitis C while in a penal colony a few years earlier.

“It was them [the FSIN officers] who infected him at a hospital in Rostov in 2022,” Khudoyberdieva insists. “He told me so himself. He had a toothache back then; they extracted the tooth at the hospital and infected him. I didn’t know; he keeps a lot of things from me. I cry and suffer for him.”

Following an examination in Simferopol, Khalilov was assigned a “group three” (moderate) disability status.

October 2025

Despite his illness, Khalilov complied with all supervision requirements and regularly checked in with the penal inspection agency.

His family had hoped he would undergo surgery in October. That did not happen.

On October 14, the Arkhangelsk Regional Court ordered Khalilov’s return to custody following a petition by the prosecutor’s office. As his lawyer Emil Kurbedinov recounted, the prosecutor argued, among other things, that Khalilov was a “particularly dangerous criminal.”

November 2025

Security officers had not come for Khalilov for nearly a month.

“I’ve aged about ten years, I think,” Khudoyberdieva says, weeping. “Whenever a car drove by, I’d think they had come for him. I lived in constant fear; I couldn’t go anywhere—I was always by my husband’s side...”

On the morning of November 6, three men in plainclothes arrived and ordered Khalilov to come downstairs with his belongings and get into their car. Leaning on a cane, the man followed them with difficulty.

March 2026

According to Umida Khudoyberdieva, after returning to Penal Colony No. 1 in Arkhangelsk, Khalilov spent three months without therapy or painkillers. He was hospitalized at the prison hospital of the Arkhangelsk Region’s Federal Penitentiary Service only after, as the political prisoner’s wife puts it, “he had probably written a hundred requests.”

May 2026

The targeted therapy drug prescribed to Khalilov was not working, and her husband’s condition was deteriorating by the day, says Khudoyberdieva. Moreover, the medication was sometimes simply unavailable.

“[The prison hospital] ran out of painkillers, and he waited a month,” she recounts. “He said he was losing his sight and that other ailments were setting in. He lost 23 kilos. He told me over the phone that he had stage IV cancer with metastases.”

July 2026

Crimean human rights activist and journalist Lutfiye Zudieva reported that Khalilov’s health is rapidly deteriorating.

“He is literally fading away. Today, Lenur Khalilov can barely move around on his own: he is transported on a gurney, and if he has to walk, he can only do so with the help of others or by leaning on surrounding objects,” Zudieva said.

September 2026

On September 15, Khalilov’s lawyer filed a request to have him transferred from the FSIN hospital to a specialised medical facility with security restrictions. According to APUS, this would allow him to “spend the rest of his days with his loved ones.”

Umida Khudoyberdieva says that during one of their recent phone conversations, her husband sounded weak and despondent.

“He says they’re waiting for something,” she says, weeping. “They’re probably waiting for me to die. It’s getting worse day by day.”

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev