'Made in Russia, Delivered into Captivity': Systematic Torture of Ukrainian POWs in Russia

Source: Kyiv Post

The event in Kyiv opened with a minute of silence.

Then the numbers came: 695 documented forms of torture; 406 confirmed dead; more than 700 defenders of Mariupol still held in Russian captivity – 4 years after they surrendered under international guarantees and walked out of the ruins of Azovstal expecting to eventually come home.

On Friday in Kyiv, Ukrainian human rights officials, intelligence officers, former prisoners of war, and the families of those still held launched a documentation project called “Made in Russia, Delivered into Captivity” – a systematic accounting of what Ukraine and international monitors describe as an industrial-scale abuse of Ukrainian prisoners of war inside Russian detention facilities. The evidence presented spanned testimony from former prisoners, forensic findings from returned bodies, and intelligence data on nearly 200 identified sites of detention scattered from occupied Donetsk to the Siberian far east.

“Russia is an exporter of torture, cruelty, and violence,” said Oleksandr Kuzmenko, a veteran of the 12th Special Purpose Brigade – Azov – who defended Mariupol, was captured on May 16, 2022, and was held for two years before his exchange. He was sentenced in absentia to 25 years in a Russian court while in custody. “You know what the worst is? Threats against my family. They gave me my family’s address – told me who lives where and how. Possible social contacts. Facebook. Instagram. I can endure physical torture. I am a man. But that – that hit hard.”

Read more: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/76813