A former political prisoner of the Kremlin, Hennadiy Afanasyev, died in the war against Russia, his friend, blogger Myroslav Oleshko, has said.
Later the information was confirmed on Facebook by Hennadiy's mother, Olha Afanasyeva.
According to a former prisoner, Volodymyr Zhemchuhov, Afanasyev was killed near Bilohorivka in Luhansk Region.
Afanasyev, who had the call sign Tor, served in the territorial defence.
His body is to be sent from Kramatorsk to Dnipro tomorrow, 22 December.
In 2014, Crimean Hennadiy Afanasyev was detained by the Russian occupying authorities. The same year, the Moscow city court sentenced Afanasyev to seven years in prison on trumped-up charges of terrorist activity.
In June 2016, he and another Ukrainian, Yuriy Soloshenko, were exchanged for Odesa journalists Olena Hlishchynska and Vitaliy Didenko, who were suspected of separatism.
Afanasyev sued Russia in the European Court of Human Rights. In 2018, the ECHR said that Russia has to pay him 2,000 euros.