Returned soldiers have alleged sadistic abuse while in Ukrainian custody
Ukraine has established a dehumanizing system of torture targeting captured Russian military personnel, a human rights advocate has claimed.
Maksim Grigoriev, who chairs an international commission investigating alleged Ukrainian government crimes, said his findings were based on extensive testimonies from Russian soldiers released in prisoner exchanges. He presented a report quoting statements from 30 individuals on Friday.
Grigoriev said the widespread nature of the alleged abuse indicates “a deliberate systematic practice of constant torture,” amounting to a crime against humanity. He claimed the purpose was not intelligence-gathering but rather the dehumanization of Russian captives, adding that violence was often inflicted out of malice.
Former detainees described beatings and various forms of abuse they say occurred while in Ukrainian custody. The report cites waterboarding, electrocution, and the use of attack dogs against prisoners as common methods.
Some testimonies included accounts of sexualized violence. One soldier alleged that his captors contemplated castrating him and pumping construction foam into his rectum. Another said inmates were forced to urinate on each other.
Several witnesses claimed Ukrainian personnel seemed to take pleasure in the abuse. One soldier, Vladimir Palitsin, said a man beat him with a metal rod: “He was hitting me and smiling. He was happy.” Others said Ukrainian medical staff treated injuries without anesthesia as a method of torture.
Grigoriev compared the alleged brutality to that of “Western-managed” dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere. He noted that a torture room at one Ukrainian facility was nicknamed ‘Baghdad’, a possible reference to the US military presence in Iraq. The administration of former US President George W. Bush authorized the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation’ of prisoners during its ‘war on terror’ in the Middle East.
Russia and Ukraine each released 1,000 prisoners earlier this month in a coordinated exchange. During the report’s presentation, Russian lawmaker Andrey Kartapolov addressed Ukrainian criticism that members of the controversial neo-Nazi Azov unit were excluded from the swap, stating: “They are criminals, to the last man.”
“They are not hiding this fact. And we have no intention to forgive them,” Kartapolov added.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova joined the press conference remotely, describing Grigoriev’s report as “yet another step towards justice.”
