"The goal of the system is to break a person and turn him into a driven animal, so that he loses his human form", says Alexander Tarasov, who was in Russian captivity. The system of terror over Ukrainians is working at full speed.
Thousands or even tens of thousands of peaceful Ukrainian residents are being held illegally by Russia in prisons and special camps - this is shown by the data of human rights activists and official Kiev. There are no exact figures for the number of civilians detained, but it is estimated that their number is between 7,000 and 30,000.
"System of terror"
"The Russian occupiers have built an entire system of terror", Russian director Evgenia Chirikova, author of a documentary called "Prisoners: The System of Terror", told DW. She protested against Putin's regime in Russia, now lives in Estonia and has been helping Ukrainians in Russian prisons for three years. "Most of the abducted Ukrainians are exposed to a terrible regime - they are deprived of communications, are tortured, are in concentration camps and cannot hope for liberation."
They were arrested for opposing the "special military operation" (as Russia officially calls the war – ed.), and this category of detainees remains completely outside the law. It is a “space of pure arbitrariness“, as human rights activists say.
“They throw Ukrainian civilians into the pre-trial detention center, but they do not open a criminal case against them. In Russia, there is a pseudo-legal system for detaining these people. It is secret, there are no open documents on this topic, although this is a gross violation of Russian legislation“, human rights activist Mikhail Sava from the Center for Civil Liberties told DW.
The torture of Ukrainian prisoners is a “systemic practice”
Sava cites UN data, according to which 91% of Ukrainians in Russian prisons and camps have been subjected to torture – of beatings, including with electric batons, of burning their tattoos, of torture with the participation of medical personnel. There are also reports of sexualized violence, of imitations of shootings, of prisoners being forced to stand all day, of being deprived of sleep at night, of being punished collectively, or of being left almost without food.
Activist Tatyana Omelyanenko says that in the Taganrog pre-trial detention center, Ukrainian prisoners are left without any food for 4-5 days and they swell with hunger. Director Evgeniya Chirikova has the same observations: “The most terrible thing is that these inhuman tortures are found in all camps. The average weight of prisoners in the Taganrog detention center, where the young Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchina died, is only 40 kilograms.
And this system of terror continues to function: “This is a systematic practice, which was recently confirmed by witnesses, former employees of the Russian Service for the Execution of Sentences, with whom the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague works“, Mikhail Sava also points out.
Systematic arrests of Ukrainian civilians
Evgenia Chirikova says that when the Russian occupation troops entered the territory of Ukraine in 2022, they already had lists of civilians to be kidnapped and tortured. That same year, the Russian government also adopted a program to expand prisons - one billion dollars were allocated for this purpose, and in 2011 the services demanded that the amount in question be increased 11 times.
“My homeland has become a concentration camp“, says Chirikova. It used to happen that Ukrainians were caught right off the street – just because they spoke Ukrainian or had pro-Ukrainian tattoos. One of those caught in this way in Kherson was Ukrainian activist Alexander Tarasov. After his arrest, he was subjected to 14 hours of torture – they beat him, hung him by the arms, tortured him with electric shocks, then left him hanging until he gave evidence and threatened to do the same to his relatives.
“The confession“ was recorded on video, where he spoke in Russian, and not in Ukrainian as usual, in the hope that whoever saw the footage would understand this sign.
"The goal is to break the person"
Tarasov was then thrown into a solitary cell - on the bare floor, with a liter of water a day and inedible dry food, and at night he could hear the screams of people beyond the wall. One of the people in the neighboring cell could not stand the torture and hanged himself. Tarasov spent a year in these conditions, without being charged and without any contact with the outside world. His relatives did not know if he was alive. According to him, 80 percent of detained Ukrainians are behind bars in the same conditions. Russia hides their number, hides their whereabouts and very rarely responds to relatives, human rights activists explain.
“The world must know that the goal of the system is to break a person and turn him into a driven animal, to lose his human form. They tortured us every day - just like that, we did not represent any operational interest. The world must understand that this system works like a conveyor belt, and the protection of international law has collapsed“, Alexander Tarasov told DV.
There is no mechanism for the release of civilians
Evgenia Chirikova notes that the main problem is the lack of mechanisms for the release of civilians from concentration camps. Only human rights activists and relatives of prisoners are looking for ways to free them.
Evgenia Chirikova draws attention to the fact that out of the thousands of Ukrainian prisoners who are civilians, Russia has so far released only 300 within the framework of an exchange, as well as another 363 - outside of official exchanges. "It is very important that at the highest level Russia demands not an exchange but the unconditional release of these people. According to all conventions and even according to the laws of Russia itself, it is illegal to kidnap them and keep them in prison," she says.