Status: 03.11.2022 09:27
According to official information, Ukrainian investigators have so far found 22 torture sites in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv. Those affected report being hit by metal bars, electric shocks and drowning.
By Rebecca Barth, WDR, currently Isjum
Residents have gathered in recent days in front of multi-story apartment blocks in Izyum, Ukraine. A generator hums. Dozens of people carry their cell phones here. There is still no electricity. Isjum is badly damaged after heavy fighting. The war left visible traces.
A time of torture and betrayal
Behind the destroyed facades, the full horror of the Russian occupation is slowly becoming visible. This half year was also a time of torture and betrayal. Oleksandr Glushko lives in one of the gray and dead blocks. He says Russian soldiers tortured him twice.
The first time in five days. They beat me to a pulp. So they just dragged me down the street and threw me into the bushes.
Then came a woman to whom he asked for help. “The woman came to me and found two boys who took me from there,” continues Gluschko.
Just another doctor in the hospital
At this point, there is only one doctor working at the hospital. He helps Glushko and registers him under a false name to protect him from Russian soldiers.
To this day, Gluschko has trouble walking – and processing what he’s experienced. He smells like alcohol. A pungent odor emanates from his apartment. He says: “I was in the war in eastern Ukraine. From 2018 to 2020. Someone betrayed me. I don’t know who.” But it was someone who knew him and knew that, explains Gluschko. He was betrayed by the Russians, he says: “Being in the war means you have connections with territorial defense or the Ukrainian army.”
conflicting parties as source
Information on the course of the war, bombing and casualties provided by official bodies of the Russian and Ukrainian parties to the conflict cannot be directly verified by an independent body in the current situation.
At least ten torture sites in Izyum
Russian soldiers are suspicious of people like Glushko. You are looking for enemies that will help the Ukrainian army to fight the Russian troops. Gluschko’s case is not an isolated one. Dozens of torture sites have already been discovered in the Kharkiv region. According to research by the AP news agency, there are ten in Isjum alone. Cellars, schools, kindergartens or police stations – torture was practiced everywhere.
Kharkiv region police chief Volodymyr Tymoshko said on Ukrainian television that in some cases people were taken to Russia – “taken to Shebekino, across the border – where they were tortured and then taken back to Ukraine”. According to Tymoschko, “our prisoners are being held by the police and the military” in Schebekino. There she was tortured.
22 torture sites in the Kharkiv region
According to official information, Ukrainian investigators have so far found 22 torture sites in different locations in the Kharkiv region. Survivors told Ukrainian media that some of them were transferred from one city to another in the region.
Gluschko is also arrested a second time. He speaks of the second arrest: “The second time, they took me just before our Ukrainian army retaken the city. For two weeks I was in a cell at the police station with some other boys.”
One of them had his teeth pulled out. He said he spent 5,000 Ukrainian hryvnias – about 140 euros – on his teeth and now has none. According to Gluschko, a 68-year-old man was also there. He’s known him for a long time, says Gluschko. “When they brought him in, I was stunned. I said to him: Mischa, how did you get here?”
broken wrists
Mischa – Michajlo Tschendej – is still being treated weeks later in a hospital in Kharkiv. His wrists are broken. Chendey was arrested and tortured on suspicion of betraying Russian positions to the Ukrainian military. A mistake, says Tschendej. And he says:
Not even the Nazis used torture like the Russians.
Five or six of them acted against one person. “I couldn’t see them, my eyes were covered, but there were so many. They went through my head, in my ear. They hit hard. For two and a half hours,” Chendey continues. He loses liters of blood and barely survives.
Methods of torture always the same
Victims report the same torture methods: beatings with metal bars, electric shocks, mock executions, drowning. Not everyone survives.
According to Ukrainian authorities, traces of torture were found in 30 of the more than 400 bodies buried in a forest near Izyum. Handcuffed, broken bones, gunshot wounds and stab wounds. The Russian armed forces – they also used systematic torture in Kharkiv.
Sites of torture in Ukraine
Rebecca Barth, WDR, currently Kyiv, November 3, 2022 8:31 am