Four women’s stories of torture in Russian captivity
Pravda Ukraine
Ukrainian women who survived Russian captivity have described systematic torture and humiliation by their captors.
Source: The Telegraph, citing testimonies from four women who survived Russian captivity
Details: The Russians stripped the women naked, forced them to march in the snow, beat them with iron pipes, tortured them with electricity and compelled them to sing the Russian anthem, among other forms of abuse.
We were constantly being told we were fascists
Larysa, 53, a former servicewoman in Ukraine’s National Guard, was captured by the Russians in occupied Mariupol in 2022 along with her husband and 34-year-old son. Their pro-Russian neighbours betrayed them.
Larysa spent seven months in captivity, initially held in a penal colony in Olenivka before being transferred to a pre-trial detention centre.
In the cells, the women were forced to stand for 12 hours a day. When taken to the shower, they were made to wear bags over their heads, pass in front of male guards completely naked, bend low and wash in ice-cold water.
“Afterwards, we were forced to sing the Russian anthem while naked. We returned to the cells in tears, utterly distraught, crying and in a state of hysteria… It was inhumane. To them, we were nothing,” Larysa recalls.
One day, a guard slammed her against the wall and beat her with a metal pole. An open wound appeared on her leg, but she was denied medical care.
“We were constantly being told we were fascists, and that if we weren’t shot by our own people during an exchange, someone else would kill us. The threat of death was always there,” she recalls.
Larysa’s husband and son remain in captivity. The thought that they may be enduring the same suffering she experienced keeps her awake at night.
“I want to tell them that I love them. I was trapped for seven months, but to think of them there, three years later, is unbearable,” she said.
We were beaten badly and the guards seemed to enjoy it
Other Ukrainian women who testified to the torture included 30-year-old combat medic Valentyna Zubko. Captured during the defence of Mariupol, she spent five and a half months in captivity.
Her living conditions were horrendous. Fifteen women were cramped into a cell meant for two, and instead of a toilet, there was just a hole in the middle of the floor.
The women were fed porridge diluted with water. Valentyna says there was only enough food to keep them from starving to death.
In addition, the Russians beat and tortured women with electric shocks during interrogations.
“Each guard tried to hit us as we walked. We had our heads down and they would force us down even lower. We were beaten badly and the guards seemed to enjoy it. There was no reason – they would just beat us for fun,” Valentyna recalls.
We were made to march in freezing cold for hours, singing the Russian national anthem
23-year-old Snizhana Ostapenko, a junior sergeant from the 56th Separate Mechanised Brigade, also survived Russian captivity and was subjected to electric shocks.
The Russians would shock her with a stun gun every time she did not answer in the way they wanted.
The women were forced to do an incredible amount of physical exercise, and when they fell down exhausted, the guards would beat them.
“We would fall to the ground and they would punish us […] We were made to march on the spot in the freezing cold for hours at a time, singing the Russian national anthem,” Snizhana said.
The prisoners were also deprived of sleep: at night, the Russian anthem was played loudly in their cells so the women could not sleep for several days.
On the night of 28-29 July 2022, Snizhana witnessed a terrorist attack in Olenivka when the Russians caused an explosion, which killed more than 50 Azov soldiers in the barracks that later became known as Barrack 200. More than a hundred soldiers were seriously injured.
The woman told how the Russians were preparing for this terrorist attack: “Well before the explosion, the guards suddenly disappeared. They were usually around, but this time, they weren’t. We all noticed and found it suspicious.”
They commented, laughed, pinched, they felt everywhere with their hands
Human rights activist Liudmyla Huseynova, originally from Novoazovsk, who was captured before the full-scale invasion, told the story of her captivity.
The Russians captured the human rights activist in 2019 and held her in torture chambers for over three years. There, she was sexually assaulted by her guards and witnessed the rape of other female prisoners.
“The bag on my head started to fall off, so they grabbed it and tightened it so much around my neck that I was being strangled. This was the first feeling of pain and horror.
They turned me to face the wall and undressed me. Someone touched me, and then there were a lot of hands. And they commented, they laughed, they pinched, they felt everywhere with their hands,” Liudmyla said.
For the first 50 days, Liudmyla was held in a tiny cell with 20 other women in completely unsanitary conditions. Like the others, she was forced to stand for more than 12 hours a day.
“One time I just couldn’t stand it, my back hurt so much… I thought, well, what will happen if I climb up into bed for 10 to 15 minutes,” she said.
Then the Russians, who had been watching the women through a video camera in the corner, opened the door and started shouting. One of the guards grabbed her leg and threw her off the bunk bed onto the concrete floor.
“I fell down, but they kept kicking me. When I took off my clothes, I saw that my body was black,” Liudmyla recalls.
Then, she saw the young girls being taken to a dormitory where the Russian occupiers lived.
“When [the women] returned, they were crying,” says the human rights activist.
Earlier, two men from the Kherson Oblast told journalists about the sexual violence they experienced in Russian torture chambers.
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