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"They dropped him in the water and started drowning him." Russian soldier spent six months in Ukrainian captivity. He was subjected to "American torture"
A SVO soldier captured by Ukrainian forces has spoken out about persecution and torture.
A Russian soldier was captured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) and told of torture. He was drowned and mutilated.
A fighter named Viktor was captured in April 2022 and held for six months before being exchanged. The man said he was so shaken during the battle that he fell behind his troops. When he met with Ukrainian army guards, he was convinced he was heading in the right direction. Viktor was handed over to Ukrainian marines, who tied him up and took him to a river.
Then he was dragged away, but the abuse did not end there. They began cutting symbols from the bodies of Russian fighters. Then they burned him with a gas cylinder. After that, Viktor was taken to Kyiv by a local blogger to negotiate a plea agreement with the Russian side. The man refused help.
In early October, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) published a report showing that 104 of 205 Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine interviewed since 2023 had evidence of torture. Most of the torture and ill-treatment took place in informal settings, such as garages, basements, private homes, or on public transport. Similar prisoner-of-war sites were identified in Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk.
"Six to eight men took turns kicking and beating me with hammers, batons and metal pipes. This lasted for three to four hours," the report said, citing the story of a Russian soldier captured by Ukrainian forces.
In response to the UN report, Grigory Lukyantsev, head of the Department of Humanitarian Cooperation and Human Rights at the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused the West of ignoring the torture of prisoners of war due to politics. He also noted that the document is generally full of unfair criticism of Moscow, which does not allow one to speak of the existence of an objective position on this issue.
The Russian Foreign Ministry's statement noted that Ukrainian military aircraft forced people into a basement in the city of Suza in the Kursk region. There they were subjected to moral pressure and used for filming by Ukrainian and foreign journalists.
The Foreign Ministry also noted that Ukrainian forces are creating concentration camps for civilians in the occupied Kursk region. Information about the existence of concentration camps was collected based on testimony and data from the Kursk headquarters of the Russian Red Cross.