Torture allegations mounting in aftermath of Kherson liberation
UKRAINIAN authorities are investigating sites where torture allegedly took place in the city of Kherson.
More than two weeks after the Russians retreated, investigators say five torture rooms have been found in the southern city and at least four more in the wider Kherson region.
Ukrainians allege that they were confined, beaten, given electric shocks, interrogated and threatened with death.
The Ukrainian national police say more than 460 war crimes have been committed by Russian soldiers in recently occupied areas of Kherson.
When a dozen Russian soldiers stormed into Dmytro Bilyi’s house in August, the 24-year-old police officer said they gave him a chilling choice: hand in his pistol or his mother and brother would disappear.
He turned his gun over to the soldiers, who carried machine guns and had their faces concealed.
But they nevertheless dragged him from his home in the southern village of Chornobaivka to a prison in the nearby regional capital of Kherson, where he said he was locked in a cell and tortured for days, his genitals and ears shocked with electricity.
“It was like hell all over my body,” he recalled. “It burns so bad it’s like the blood is boiling ... I just wanted it to stop.”
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Centre for Civil Liberties, a local rights group, said: “For months we’ve received information about torture and other kind of persecution of civilians. I am afraid that horrible findings in Kherson still lie ahead.”
The Associated Press spoke with five people who allege they were tortured or arbitrarily detained by Russians in Kherson or knew of others who disappeared and endured abuse.
Sometimes, they said, the Russians rounded up whoever they saw – priests, soldiers, teachers or doctors – for no specific reason. In other cases,
Russians were allegedly tipped off by sympathisers who provided names of people believed to be helping the Ukrainian military.
Once detained, the people said they were locked in crowded cells, fed meagre portions of watery soup and bread, and made to learn the Russian anthem while listening to screams from prisoners being tortured across the corridor.
As a police officer with a father in the military, Mr Bilyi remained under the radar for several months of Russia’s occupation, until he said someone probably tipped them off. He spent four days in a cell with others, being pulled out for questioning and electric shocks.
Investigators accused him of having a Kalashnikov rifle – not just a pistol – and pressured him to reveal his father’s whereabouts. They then shocked him for half an hour a day for two days before releasing him, he said.
Ukrainian national police allege that more than 460 war crimes have been committed by Russian soldiers in recently occupied areas of Kherson.
The torture in the city occurred in two police stations, one police-run detention centre, a prison and a private medical facility, where rubber batons, baseball bats and a machine used for applying electrical shocks were found, said Andrii Kovanyi, a press officer for the police in Kherson.
When Igor, who gave only his first name to protect his identity, was detained in September from the call centre where he worked, he was taken into a room, ordered to remove his shirt and to place his palms on the metal door to increase the flow of electricity, he said. “The Russian soldier said ‘now you’re going to scream like a bitch ... You will not get out of here, and we will kill you,’” said Igor.
The 22-year-old said he was shocked by a gun along his back for two-and-ahalf hours and then forced to stay awake in a chair all night.
Pictures on his phone show clusters of red circular marks lining the length of his back.
He was freed after two days but not before writing a letter providing details about a relative, about whom the Russians wanted information.
It burns so bad it’s like the blood is boiling ... I just wanted it to stop