One of the few successes to come out of the recent peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have been agreements for prisoner swaps. At the end of May, the largest swap since the beginning of the war took place, with each side handing over more than 300 service personnel and civilians. This week President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram that preparations are being made to exchange 1,200 more.
There are still thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians — including journalists, activists and residents of the occupied territories — being held in cramped and unsanitary facilities in a network of detention centers across Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia itself. They are held, often incommunicado, in overcrowded facilities where they are physically and psychologically tortured, underfed and denied legal representation and medical care. Some have been returned to their families in body bags.
Prisoners on both sides of this conflict have reported being subjected to abuse, despite the humane treatment of prisoners of war being demanded by international law. Based on my findings, only one side employs torture as an integral part of its war policy: Russia. Though Russia has denied that it employs torture, the consistent and widespread nature of witness accounts while in Russian custody — along with Moscow’s failure to address the issue — have led me to the conclusion that it can only be a systemic, state-endorsed practice approved at the highest levels. This creates profound distrust in Russia as a negotiating partner.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion over three years ago, I have documented allegations of beatings — by Russian forces and other authorities of Ukrainian prisoners of war as well as civilians — that last for hours, egregious sexual violence, electric shocks, suffocation, sleep deprivation and mock executions. Malnourishment is routine and individuals have reported being hung upside down and held in other stress positions for prolonged periods, sometimes while being beaten. Many of my findings have been supported by those of other international authorities, including the U.N. Commission of Inquiry.
The stories are horrifying. Oleksandr Kharlats, a Ukrainian veteran who was detained twice early in the war, described to me in an interview that he was held in a small cell with around eight other men. Mr. Kharlats said he was interrogated six or seven times, sometimes at night and always with the same approach: He would be electrocuted while being forced to hold his arms along his body to intensify the pain. When he fell to the floor with convulsions, he said, soldiers would hit his back with the butts of their machine guns or beat his limbs with batons.
Anatoliy Tutov told me that he was interrogated four times during his detention and that these interrogations included repeated electrocutions, beatings and sexualized torture, including a threat to cut off his penis and rape him. After his release, he was diagnosed with bruises on his internal organs, two broken ribs and cracks in several others.
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The post I’ve Seen How Russia Is Torturing Prisoners of War, and It’s Horrifying appeared first on New York Times.
