Drink all day “with a break for lunch”. In Taganrog, Russia, the pre-trial detention center was turned into a torture camp for Ukrainian prisoners – Mediazone

Mediazon writes about this, telling how an ordinary Russian pre-trial detention center was turned into a torture camp during the war. Detainees and their lawyers talk about the inhuman conditions of detention, beatings and electric torture.

In 2022, soldiers from the regiment began to be brought to SIZO-2 in Taganrog “Azov”, who were captured after the siege of the Mariupol plant. Arrested teenagers and mothers with children, who were there before the start of the war, were distributed to other detention centers, the publication writes. Access to the detention center for lawyers and human rights defenders was immediately closed.

Very quickly, SIZO-2 in Tagangrog gained the reputation of a torture chamber, where violence against Ukrainians became a daily practice.

Ukrainians who passed through the Taganrog detention center – both military and civilians – talk about constant beatings and abuse with the demand to confess to “war crimes”. Such interrogations are conducted throughout the day with an hour break for lunch.

Those who were detained in other pre-trial detention centers are threatened with being sent to Taganrog — it is enough to refuse to cooperate with the investigation.

“The detention center in this city has become a symbol of fear, helplessness and humiliation for Ukrainians,” Mediazone writes.

According to one of the lawyers of the captured Ukrainians, many stories about what is happening in SIZO-2 are so terrible that it is hard to believe them. However, colleagues heard from others “Taganrozh residents” the same. What is happening in the detention center, the interlocutor of the journalists called the incredible scale of violence.

Ukrainian prisoners who ended up in the detention center of Taganrog were beaten from the very first minutes – with hands, feet, sticks and electric shockers.

“Hello, boys! Do you know where you have arrived? You will rot here for the rest of your life!” — the publication quotes a Russian officer who met Ukrainian prisoners of war.

“Investigative actions” conducted with Ukrainians were often accompanied by beatings and abuse. According to the prisoners and their lawyers, Ukrainians are tortured with electric current, hung upside down, upside down, beaten, put in stretchers, strangled to the point of asphyxiation, and starved. During such “procedures” prisoners and confess to “war crimes”.

Ukrainian prisoners of war do not stop being beaten even during short walks in the fresh air. In one of the letters, the Ukrainian prisoner calls SIZO-2 “hell with all its demons”, where it is scary to return.

Russian pre-trial detention centers hold not only Ukrainian military personnel who were captured during hostilities, but also civilians, the journalists emphasize. People, for example, can be kidnapped and isolated with the help of the Armed Forces. However, according to the lawyers, the Russian military “they simply rounded up everyone who was suspicious to them.” Journalist Victoria Roschyna, who disappeared in the occupied territory in the summer of 2023, was also recognized as “suspicious”. As a result, the girl ended up in the torture prison of Taganrog and spent almost a year there. Presumably, Viktoriya Roshchyna died during transportation from this pre-trial detention center to Moscow. Her body is still in Russia.

Currently, former detainees are being returned to the detention center, but Ukrainian prisoners of war are still being held in separate blocks of the detention center. There is still no contact with those who remain in Taganrog.

As the head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, Danielle Bell, stated, “more than 95% of captured Ukrainian military personnel are subjected to torture in Russia.”

In July 2024, the human rights commissioner of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Dmytro Lubinets, said that Russia was holding more than 14,000 Ukrainian civilians captive. According to him, “even in the Kyiv region, which was the least under Russian occupation, about 600 Ukrainian civilians were captured.” The Ukrainian Ombudsman also noted that civilians are the most difficult category for return.

In October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi said that Moscow is illegally detaining thousands more Ukrainians.

“Torture, humiliation and hunger are what our Ukrainian people go through in Russian prisons and camps,” said the Ukrainian leader.

According to him, almost everyone who was returned needed long-term treatment and rehabilitation.