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Testimonies have been gathered from victims who had been detained by the Russian military near Kyiv in the early weeks of the war. Some were held in a pit, others had their hands beaten with hammer, others with an axe and rifle butt. Some never made it out alive.
Fresh graves of servicemen who died defending Ukraine from Russian invaders at the cemetery of Bucha, Kyiv Region.
KYIV — In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military moved quickly to the outskirts of Kyiv and began conducting searches and arrests there. Residents of three settlements — Dymera, Kozarovichi, and Katyuzhanka — have recounted to human rights activists in recent months how they had been detained, beaten, and tortured during the occupation.
These testimonies have formed the basis of the report "Unlawful Confinement and Torture in Dymer, Kozarovychi, and Katyuzhanka in Ukraine," released together by three human rights organizations, the International Partnership for Human Rights, Truth Hounds, and Global Diligence.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Russian-language media Vazhnyye Istorii reports some of the most heinous parts of the findings (the names of the victims have been changed).
Here are excerpts of those testimonies.
Blindfolded with no bathroom An employee of the Irpen Dam, Vladyslav, 29, was hiding in a cellar in Kozarovichi with his parents and younger brother in early March when Russian soldiers came to their house. They started to search the house and check their phones. They found a photo of the dam, which he had taken before the war began. They took his phone and documents, did not give them back, put a bag on his head, and took him away from the house. Vladyslav was beaten severely: they threw him to the ground, hit his face, and demanded he admit that he was a spotter, i.e., that he reported the location of the occupants to the Ukrainian army. He denied the accusations. For about seven to ten days, he was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Kozarovichi. In a room one and a half meters wide and six to seven meters long, there were 10 people, mostly his fellow villagers. People could not lie down with their legs stretched out. The room was dark and freezing, and everyone had a cold. The occupants forbade them to talk to each other. The Russian military did not let the detainees go to the bathroom: "Sometimes the guys would go under themselves. When this happened, the Russians didn't react at all. It quickly began to stink because the carpet was soaked with urine. They gave us a bucket for the toilet at the end of our stay. I asked to go to the bathroom three or four times, but I only went once ... All the time, we were tied up and blindfolded. By the end of my stay there, I stretched my bound hands forward because I couldn't stand it anymore.” Hands beaten with a hammer The prisoners were hardly fed. “The Russians gave water in a cork bottle or a mug and let you take a sip or two so that you didn't drink too much. I drank water three or four times during the entire time there, one or two sips at a time. They probably gave me food more often, but I only got waffles, although there were days when they didn't give me anything.” The military took the detainees for interrogations. They tortured Vladyslav again during the interrogation and beat him with a hammer on his fingers because they found a couple of photos of Russian equipment on his phone. "He [a Russian] threw me on the ground, started asking who I worked for, and beat me after each question, without waiting for an answer, hitting my face. I was confused, and didn’t understand what he wanted from me. After the blows, I felt my teeth crack. He asked about the "relatives of the Ukrainian soldiers" and so on. I said I didn't know. Then he kicked me, threw me on my back again, and started kicking me, and I tried to cover my body and face. He took my hands, which were tied... and began to beat my fingers. He threatened to cut my wrists. He hit my head hard, and I started screaming because it felt like my head would explode." "Then I heard a gun coming from nearby, and he ran out for a minute. I stayed down, moved the bag from my eyes, and saw a puddle of blood and battered hands. He came back, picked me up, quickly dragged me to the cell, and threw me inside." Other prisoners interviewed by human rights activists recalled the brutal beating and torture of the "dam worker."Accused of espionage Another prisoner held at the Kozarovichi depot was 60-year-old Aleksandr. The Russian military accused him of espionage for a text message sent to his brother in America, in which he reported that a Russian military unit had entered Kozarovichi. He described the same conditions as Vladyslav - crowded conditions, lack of food and water, and the military's refusal to take prisoners to the bathroom. His hands were permanently tied during captivity, and his eyes were taped shut. After a few days, the prisoners were transported to a foundry in Dymer. "One of the Russian soldiers explained this by saying, 'if we are left here, the special forces will kill us,'" Vladyslav recalls. Natalia, 64, was captured by the Russian military on March 20 after finding her son's old quadcopter drone. She said her son had been using it to shoot video, but by then, it had been lying broken in the garage for five years. "One of the Russians said that they use these drones to give coordinates to the Ukrainian army and kill their guys," Natalia recalls. They took her along with a neighbor who happened to walk into the yard at that moment. Natalia begged the military to let her go. Together with the neighbor, they were brought to the factory in Dymer, which the locals call the foundry (where they produce profiles for plastic windows). Natalya got hysterical while in captivity and asked the soldiers for her medicine for her blood pressure, but they refused. Compressor room of the "Foundry" in Dymer Vazhnyye Istorii Better off shot According to several prisoners, 65-year-old Bogdan and his 43-year-old son Denis were severely tortured. They were accused of carrying weapons. "They beat them all the time, broke ribs, hands, legs." "The first day, I was beaten so badly I couldn't stand up,” tells Bogdan. “Every time they hit me, they asked where the weapon was. My son's upper jaw was completely knocked out. I already thought it would be better if they shot me than tortured me like that." At different times in the compressor room of the foundry, there were from 22 to 43 people. According to the prisoners, there were people from Dymer and all nearby villages: Ivanovka, Kozarovichi, and Litvinovka. There was less than a square meter per detainee. There were barrels instead of toilets. The room had no windows, and the captives were always blindfolded. The only access to air and light was through cracks in the doors.Huddled together The prisoners slept on thin, dirty mattresses on the floor, huddled together to keep themselves warm in their sleep. There were few mattresses, so many slept on the concrete. According to one of the prisoners, one could only sleep on the floor for a couple of hours. Otherwise, it got too cold. Sometimes the temperature in the room dropped to minus 12 degrees Celsius. They drank dirty water from a barrel. They sometimes brought soup in a bucket and sometimes porridge, which made detainees sick, but they were not given any medication. There were only a few spoons for everybody, and many had to eat with their hands. Andriy, 52, was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers after a search of his house. The soldiers were looking for money, thinking he was cashing in by distributing humanitarian aid. During his captivity, one of the soldiers led him out for questioning: "He shot several times near my ear and asked if [I was] scared. I replied that I couldn't hear in that ear, and he said: "Bitch, you fucked up here, too..." He hit me in the chest with the butt of his assault rifle, right in the middle. He asked about the army's positions, telling me that he knew everything about me, that I had been 'on the other side [for humanitarian aid] and therefore must know about the positions. I said I did not go to the military, but he did not believe me. NKVD firing squad threats, teeth knocked out According to Andriy and another detainee, this same serviceman repeatedly referred to the NKVD (the much feared former Soviet interior ministry) while yelling at the prisoners. One evening the Russians were celebrating something, drinking. The Russian serviceman came into the room with the prisoners and shouted: "Now it's going to be like the NKVD, bitch, who wants to go to the firing squad first?" Then he shot several times, and one of the bullets hit a barrel the detainees were using as a toilet - urine started flowing out of it. After the shots were fired, he asked: "Why don't you say anything?" and left. Dmytro, 73, and his wife had been living in the basement for a month since the start of Dymer's occupation. On March 28, his wife asked him to go to the Red Cross to get medicine. On the way, he was detained by Russian soldiers. "They told me: 'Take off your clothes.' I undressed. They asked, 'Why are you looking around?'" I said, "I'm going home to my wife," Dmytro recalls. "I couldn't even get up when he hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. He knocked out my teeth and broke my lower jaw. They put a hat over my eyes, tied it with duct tape, tied up my mouth and nose with tape, lifted me [from my knees], took me into the store, put me on a crate, and tied my legs together. I sat there for 24 hours.” A prisoner's pit in the forest near Katyuzhanka Vazhnyye IstoriiDumped in a pit A day later, the Russian military took Dmytro and other detained Ukrainians to a dugout in the woods. Another day later, they were taken to a pit in Katyuzhanka. There were from eight to 13 civilians in the hole. The pit was nine square meters in area and about two to two and a half meters deep. The prisoners were tied and blindfolded. One of them had scars on his hands from the ties four months after his release. There was no food or water. "It was cold in the pit; we were sitting on the wet sand. There were soldiers sitting upstairs, drinking. They said that they had come to change [our] government: 'You could negotiate with (former President Petro) Poroshenko and (former President Viktor) Yanukovych, but not with this one. " Among those detained in the pit were two brothers: Ilya, 45, and Yegor, 37. The Russian military took them prisoners, thinking they were spies. "They took us out of the car and started beating my brother and me," Ilya recalls. “One of them asked why we were aiming artillery, although we weren't aiming anything. They beat my brother with an axe. [...] One of the Russians told us [while we were in the pit] that some of us would go home, and they would take some with them. He said that they wouldn't let my brother go because he was supposedly a gunner, and they still had to think about me because I have a small child.“ On March 31, all prisoners were taken to a private house. The military told them not to leave the house until morning. When leaving, they took several detainees with them. One of them was Ilya's brother. There has been no information about him since
An employee of the Irpen Dam, Vladyslav, 29, was hiding in a cellar in Kozarovichi with his parents and younger brother in early March when Russian soldiers came to their house. They started to search the house and check their phones. They found a photo of the dam, which he had taken before the war began. They took his phone and documents, did not give them back, put a bag on his head, and took him away from the house.
Vladyslav was beaten severely: they threw him to the ground, hit his face, and demanded he admit that he was a spotter, i.e., that he reported the location of the occupants to the Ukrainian army. He denied the accusations.
For about seven to ten days, he was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Kozarovichi. In a room one and a half meters wide and six to seven meters long, there were 10 people, mostly his fellow villagers. People could not lie down with their legs stretched out. The room was dark and freezing, and everyone had a cold. The occupants forbade them to talk to each other.
The Russian military did not let the detainees go to the bathroom: "Sometimes the guys would go under themselves. When this happened, the Russians didn't react at all. It quickly began to stink because the carpet was soaked with urine. They gave us a bucket for the toilet at the end of our stay. I asked to go to the bathroom three or four times, but I only went once ... All the time, we were tied up and blindfolded. By the end of my stay there, I stretched my bound hands forward because I couldn't stand it anymore.”
The prisoners were hardly fed. “The Russians gave water in a cork bottle or a mug and let you take a sip or two so that you didn't drink too much. I drank water three or four times during the entire time there, one or two sips at a time. They probably gave me food more often, but I only got waffles, although there were days when they didn't give me anything.”
The military took the detainees for interrogations. They tortured Vladyslav again during the interrogation and beat him with a hammer on his fingers because they found a couple of photos of Russian equipment on his phone. "He [a Russian] threw me on the ground, started asking who I worked for, and beat me after each question, without waiting for an answer, hitting my face. I was confused, and didn’t understand what he wanted from me.
After the blows, I felt my teeth crack. He asked about the "relatives of the Ukrainian soldiers" and so on. I said I didn't know. Then he kicked me, threw me on my back again, and started kicking me, and I tried to cover my body and face. He took my hands, which were tied... and began to beat my fingers. He threatened to cut my wrists. He hit my head hard, and I started screaming because it felt like my head would explode."
"Then I heard a gun coming from nearby, and he ran out for a minute. I stayed down, moved the bag from my eyes, and saw a puddle of blood and battered hands. He came back, picked me up, quickly dragged me to the cell, and threw me inside."
Other prisoners interviewed by human rights activists recalled the brutal beating and torture of the "dam worker."
Another prisoner held at the Kozarovichi depot was 60-year-old Aleksandr. The Russian military accused him of espionage for a text message sent to his brother in America, in which he reported that a Russian military unit had entered Kozarovichi.
He described the same conditions as Vladyslav - crowded conditions, lack of food and water, and the military's refusal to take prisoners to the bathroom. His hands were permanently tied during captivity, and his eyes were taped shut.
After a few days, the prisoners were transported to a foundry in Dymer. "One of the Russian soldiers explained this by saying, 'if we are left here, the special forces will kill us,'" Vladyslav recalls.
Natalia, 64, was captured by the Russian military on March 20 after finding her son's old quadcopter drone. She said her son had been using it to shoot video, but by then, it had been lying broken in the garage for five years.
"One of the Russians said that they use these drones to give coordinates to the Ukrainian army and kill their guys," Natalia recalls. They took her along with a neighbor who happened to walk into the yard at that moment. Natalia begged the military to let her go.
Together with the neighbor, they were brought to the factory in Dymer, which the locals call the foundry (where they produce profiles for plastic windows). Natalya got hysterical while in captivity and asked the soldiers for her medicine for her blood pressure, but they refused.
Compressor room of the "Foundry" in Dymer
According to several prisoners, 65-year-old Bogdan and his 43-year-old son Denis were severely tortured. They were accused of carrying weapons. "They beat them all the time, broke ribs, hands, legs."
"The first day, I was beaten so badly I couldn't stand up,” tells Bogdan. “Every time they hit me, they asked where the weapon was. My son's upper jaw was completely knocked out. I already thought it would be better if they shot me than tortured me like that."
At different times in the compressor room of the foundry, there were from 22 to 43 people. According to the prisoners, there were people from Dymer and all nearby villages: Ivanovka, Kozarovichi, and Litvinovka. There was less than a square meter per detainee. There were barrels instead of toilets. The room had no windows, and the captives were always blindfolded. The only access to air and light was through cracks in the doors.
The prisoners slept on thin, dirty mattresses on the floor, huddled together to keep themselves warm in their sleep. There were few mattresses, so many slept on the concrete. According to one of the prisoners, one could only sleep on the floor for a couple of hours. Otherwise, it got too cold.
Sometimes the temperature in the room dropped to minus 12 degrees Celsius. They drank dirty water from a barrel. They sometimes brought soup in a bucket and sometimes porridge, which made detainees sick, but they were not given any medication. There were only a few spoons for everybody, and many had to eat with their hands.
Andriy, 52, was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers after a search of his house. The soldiers were looking for money, thinking he was cashing in by distributing humanitarian aid. During his captivity, one of the soldiers led him out for questioning: "He shot several times near my ear and asked if [I was] scared. I replied that I couldn't hear in that ear, and he said: "Bitch, you fucked up here, too..."
He hit me in the chest with the butt of his assault rifle, right in the middle. He asked about the army's positions, telling me that he knew everything about me, that I had been 'on the other side [for humanitarian aid] and therefore must know about the positions. I said I did not go to the military, but he did not believe me.
According to Andriy and another detainee, this same serviceman repeatedly referred to the NKVD (the much feared former Soviet interior ministry) while yelling at the prisoners. One evening the Russians were celebrating something, drinking. The Russian serviceman came into the room with the prisoners and shouted: "Now it's going to be like the NKVD, bitch, who wants to go to the firing squad first?" Then he shot several times, and one of the bullets hit a barrel the detainees were using as a toilet - urine started flowing out of it. After the shots were fired, he asked: "Why don't you say anything?" and left.
Dmytro, 73, and his wife had been living in the basement for a month since the start of Dymer's occupation. On March 28, his wife asked him to go to the Red Cross to get medicine. On the way, he was detained by Russian soldiers.
"They told me: 'Take off your clothes.' I undressed. They asked, 'Why are you looking around?'" I said, "I'm going home to my wife," Dmytro recalls.
"I couldn't even get up when he hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. He knocked out my teeth and broke my lower jaw. They put a hat over my eyes, tied it with duct tape, tied up my mouth and nose with tape, lifted me [from my knees], took me into the store, put me on a crate, and tied my legs together. I sat there for 24 hours.”
A prisoner's pit in the forest near Katyuzhanka
A day later, the Russian military took Dmytro and other detained Ukrainians to a dugout in the woods. Another day later, they were taken to a pit in Katyuzhanka. There were from eight to 13 civilians in the hole.
The pit was nine square meters in area and about two to two and a half meters deep. The prisoners were tied and blindfolded. One of them had scars on his hands from the ties four months after his release. There was no food or water. "It was cold in the pit; we were sitting on the wet sand. There were soldiers sitting upstairs, drinking. They said that they had come to change [our] government: 'You could negotiate with (former President Petro) Poroshenko and (former President Viktor) Yanukovych, but not with this one. "
Among those detained in the pit were two brothers: Ilya, 45, and Yegor, 37. The Russian military took them prisoners, thinking they were spies.
"They took us out of the car and started beating my brother and me," Ilya recalls. “One of them asked why we were aiming artillery, although we weren't aiming anything. They beat my brother with an axe. [...] One of the Russians told us [while we were in the pit] that some of us would go home, and they would take some with them. He said that they wouldn't let my brother go because he was supposedly a gunner, and they still had to think about me because I have a small child.“
On March 31, all prisoners were taken to a private house. The military told them not to leave the house until morning. When leaving, they took several detainees with them. One of them was Ilya's brother. There has been no information about him since
Testimonies have been gathered from victims who had been detained by the Russian military near Kyiv in the early weeks of the war. Some were held in a pit, others had their hands beaten with hammer, others with an axe and rifle butt. Some never made it out alive.
Fresh graves of servicemen who died defending Ukraine from Russian invaders at the cemetery of Bucha, Kyiv Region.
KYIV — In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military moved quickly to the outskirts of Kyiv and began conducting searches and arrests there. Residents of three settlements — Dymera, Kozarovichi, and Katyuzhanka — have recounted to human rights activists in recent months how they had been detained, beaten, and tortured during the occupation.
These testimonies have formed the basis of the report "Unlawful Confinement and Torture in Dymer, Kozarovychi, and Katyuzhanka in Ukraine," released together by three human rights organizations, the International Partnership for Human Rights, Truth Hounds, and Global Diligence.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Russian-language media Vazhnyye Istorii reports some of the most heinous parts of the findings (the names of the victims have been changed).
Here are excerpts of those testimonies.
Blindfolded with no bathroom An employee of the Irpen Dam, Vladyslav, 29, was hiding in a cellar in Kozarovichi with his parents and younger brother in early March when Russian soldiers came to their house. They started to search the house and check their phones. They found a photo of the dam, which he had taken before the war began. They took his phone and documents, did not give them back, put a bag on his head, and took him away from the house. Vladyslav was beaten severely: they threw him to the ground, hit his face, and demanded he admit that he was a spotter, i.e., that he reported the location of the occupants to the Ukrainian army. He denied the accusations. For about seven to ten days, he was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Kozarovichi. In a room one and a half meters wide and six to seven meters long, there were 10 people, mostly his fellow villagers. People could not lie down with their legs stretched out. The room was dark and freezing, and everyone had a cold. The occupants forbade them to talk to each other. The Russian military did not let the detainees go to the bathroom: "Sometimes the guys would go under themselves. When this happened, the Russians didn't react at all. It quickly began to stink because the carpet was soaked with urine. They gave us a bucket for the toilet at the end of our stay. I asked to go to the bathroom three or four times, but I only went once ... All the time, we were tied up and blindfolded. By the end of my stay there, I stretched my bound hands forward because I couldn't stand it anymore.” Hands beaten with a hammer The prisoners were hardly fed. “The Russians gave water in a cork bottle or a mug and let you take a sip or two so that you didn't drink too much. I drank water three or four times during the entire time there, one or two sips at a time. They probably gave me food more often, but I only got waffles, although there were days when they didn't give me anything.” The military took the detainees for interrogations. They tortured Vladyslav again during the interrogation and beat him with a hammer on his fingers because they found a couple of photos of Russian equipment on his phone. "He [a Russian] threw me on the ground, started asking who I worked for, and beat me after each question, without waiting for an answer, hitting my face. I was confused, and didn’t understand what he wanted from me. After the blows, I felt my teeth crack. He asked about the "relatives of the Ukrainian soldiers" and so on. I said I didn't know. Then he kicked me, threw me on my back again, and started kicking me, and I tried to cover my body and face. He took my hands, which were tied... and began to beat my fingers. He threatened to cut my wrists. He hit my head hard, and I started screaming because it felt like my head would explode." "Then I heard a gun coming from nearby, and he ran out for a minute. I stayed down, moved the bag from my eyes, and saw a puddle of blood and battered hands. He came back, picked me up, quickly dragged me to the cell, and threw me inside." Other prisoners interviewed by human rights activists recalled the brutal beating and torture of the "dam worker."Accused of espionage Another prisoner held at the Kozarovichi depot was 60-year-old Aleksandr. The Russian military accused him of espionage for a text message sent to his brother in America, in which he reported that a Russian military unit had entered Kozarovichi. He described the same conditions as Vladyslav - crowded conditions, lack of food and water, and the military's refusal to take prisoners to the bathroom. His hands were permanently tied during captivity, and his eyes were taped shut. After a few days, the prisoners were transported to a foundry in Dymer. "One of the Russian soldiers explained this by saying, 'if we are left here, the special forces will kill us,'" Vladyslav recalls. Natalia, 64, was captured by the Russian military on March 20 after finding her son's old quadcopter drone. She said her son had been using it to shoot video, but by then, it had been lying broken in the garage for five years. "One of the Russians said that they use these drones to give coordinates to the Ukrainian army and kill their guys," Natalia recalls. They took her along with a neighbor who happened to walk into the yard at that moment. Natalia begged the military to let her go. Together with the neighbor, they were brought to the factory in Dymer, which the locals call the foundry (where they produce profiles for plastic windows). Natalya got hysterical while in captivity and asked the soldiers for her medicine for her blood pressure, but they refused. Compressor room of the "Foundry" in Dymer Vazhnyye Istorii Better off shot According to several prisoners, 65-year-old Bogdan and his 43-year-old son Denis were severely tortured. They were accused of carrying weapons. "They beat them all the time, broke ribs, hands, legs." "The first day, I was beaten so badly I couldn't stand up,” tells Bogdan. “Every time they hit me, they asked where the weapon was. My son's upper jaw was completely knocked out. I already thought it would be better if they shot me than tortured me like that." At different times in the compressor room of the foundry, there were from 22 to 43 people. According to the prisoners, there were people from Dymer and all nearby villages: Ivanovka, Kozarovichi, and Litvinovka. There was less than a square meter per detainee. There were barrels instead of toilets. The room had no windows, and the captives were always blindfolded. The only access to air and light was through cracks in the doors.Huddled together The prisoners slept on thin, dirty mattresses on the floor, huddled together to keep themselves warm in their sleep. There were few mattresses, so many slept on the concrete. According to one of the prisoners, one could only sleep on the floor for a couple of hours. Otherwise, it got too cold. Sometimes the temperature in the room dropped to minus 12 degrees Celsius. They drank dirty water from a barrel. They sometimes brought soup in a bucket and sometimes porridge, which made detainees sick, but they were not given any medication. There were only a few spoons for everybody, and many had to eat with their hands. Andriy, 52, was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers after a search of his house. The soldiers were looking for money, thinking he was cashing in by distributing humanitarian aid. During his captivity, one of the soldiers led him out for questioning: "He shot several times near my ear and asked if [I was] scared. I replied that I couldn't hear in that ear, and he said: "Bitch, you fucked up here, too..." He hit me in the chest with the butt of his assault rifle, right in the middle. He asked about the army's positions, telling me that he knew everything about me, that I had been 'on the other side [for humanitarian aid] and therefore must know about the positions. I said I did not go to the military, but he did not believe me. NKVD firing squad threats, teeth knocked out According to Andriy and another detainee, this same serviceman repeatedly referred to the NKVD (the much feared former Soviet interior ministry) while yelling at the prisoners. One evening the Russians were celebrating something, drinking. The Russian serviceman came into the room with the prisoners and shouted: "Now it's going to be like the NKVD, bitch, who wants to go to the firing squad first?" Then he shot several times, and one of the bullets hit a barrel the detainees were using as a toilet - urine started flowing out of it. After the shots were fired, he asked: "Why don't you say anything?" and left. Dmytro, 73, and his wife had been living in the basement for a month since the start of Dymer's occupation. On March 28, his wife asked him to go to the Red Cross to get medicine. On the way, he was detained by Russian soldiers. "They told me: 'Take off your clothes.' I undressed. They asked, 'Why are you looking around?'" I said, "I'm going home to my wife," Dmytro recalls. "I couldn't even get up when he hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. He knocked out my teeth and broke my lower jaw. They put a hat over my eyes, tied it with duct tape, tied up my mouth and nose with tape, lifted me [from my knees], took me into the store, put me on a crate, and tied my legs together. I sat there for 24 hours.” A prisoner's pit in the forest near Katyuzhanka Vazhnyye IstoriiDumped in a pit A day later, the Russian military took Dmytro and other detained Ukrainians to a dugout in the woods. Another day later, they were taken to a pit in Katyuzhanka. There were from eight to 13 civilians in the hole. The pit was nine square meters in area and about two to two and a half meters deep. The prisoners were tied and blindfolded. One of them had scars on his hands from the ties four months after his release. There was no food or water. "It was cold in the pit; we were sitting on the wet sand. There were soldiers sitting upstairs, drinking. They said that they had come to change [our] government: 'You could negotiate with (former President Petro) Poroshenko and (former President Viktor) Yanukovych, but not with this one. " Among those detained in the pit were two brothers: Ilya, 45, and Yegor, 37. The Russian military took them prisoners, thinking they were spies. "They took us out of the car and started beating my brother and me," Ilya recalls. “One of them asked why we were aiming artillery, although we weren't aiming anything. They beat my brother with an axe. [...] One of the Russians told us [while we were in the pit] that some of us would go home, and they would take some with them. He said that they wouldn't let my brother go because he was supposedly a gunner, and they still had to think about me because I have a small child.“ On March 31, all prisoners were taken to a private house. The military told them not to leave the house until morning. When leaving, they took several detainees with them. One of them was Ilya's brother. There has been no information about him since
An employee of the Irpen Dam, Vladyslav, 29, was hiding in a cellar in Kozarovichi with his parents and younger brother in early March when Russian soldiers came to their house. They started to search the house and check their phones. They found a photo of the dam, which he had taken before the war began. They took his phone and documents, did not give them back, put a bag on his head, and took him away from the house.
Vladyslav was beaten severely: they threw him to the ground, hit his face, and demanded he admit that he was a spotter, i.e., that he reported the location of the occupants to the Ukrainian army. He denied the accusations.
For about seven to ten days, he was held in a warehouse on the outskirts of Kozarovichi. In a room one and a half meters wide and six to seven meters long, there were 10 people, mostly his fellow villagers. People could not lie down with their legs stretched out. The room was dark and freezing, and everyone had a cold. The occupants forbade them to talk to each other.
The Russian military did not let the detainees go to the bathroom: "Sometimes the guys would go under themselves. When this happened, the Russians didn't react at all. It quickly began to stink because the carpet was soaked with urine. They gave us a bucket for the toilet at the end of our stay. I asked to go to the bathroom three or four times, but I only went once ... All the time, we were tied up and blindfolded. By the end of my stay there, I stretched my bound hands forward because I couldn't stand it anymore.”
The prisoners were hardly fed. “The Russians gave water in a cork bottle or a mug and let you take a sip or two so that you didn't drink too much. I drank water three or four times during the entire time there, one or two sips at a time. They probably gave me food more often, but I only got waffles, although there were days when they didn't give me anything.”
The military took the detainees for interrogations. They tortured Vladyslav again during the interrogation and beat him with a hammer on his fingers because they found a couple of photos of Russian equipment on his phone. "He [a Russian] threw me on the ground, started asking who I worked for, and beat me after each question, without waiting for an answer, hitting my face. I was confused, and didn’t understand what he wanted from me.
After the blows, I felt my teeth crack. He asked about the "relatives of the Ukrainian soldiers" and so on. I said I didn't know. Then he kicked me, threw me on my back again, and started kicking me, and I tried to cover my body and face. He took my hands, which were tied... and began to beat my fingers. He threatened to cut my wrists. He hit my head hard, and I started screaming because it felt like my head would explode."
"Then I heard a gun coming from nearby, and he ran out for a minute. I stayed down, moved the bag from my eyes, and saw a puddle of blood and battered hands. He came back, picked me up, quickly dragged me to the cell, and threw me inside."
Other prisoners interviewed by human rights activists recalled the brutal beating and torture of the "dam worker."
Another prisoner held at the Kozarovichi depot was 60-year-old Aleksandr. The Russian military accused him of espionage for a text message sent to his brother in America, in which he reported that a Russian military unit had entered Kozarovichi.
He described the same conditions as Vladyslav - crowded conditions, lack of food and water, and the military's refusal to take prisoners to the bathroom. His hands were permanently tied during captivity, and his eyes were taped shut.
After a few days, the prisoners were transported to a foundry in Dymer. "One of the Russian soldiers explained this by saying, 'if we are left here, the special forces will kill us,'" Vladyslav recalls.
Natalia, 64, was captured by the Russian military on March 20 after finding her son's old quadcopter drone. She said her son had been using it to shoot video, but by then, it had been lying broken in the garage for five years.
"One of the Russians said that they use these drones to give coordinates to the Ukrainian army and kill their guys," Natalia recalls. They took her along with a neighbor who happened to walk into the yard at that moment. Natalia begged the military to let her go.
Together with the neighbor, they were brought to the factory in Dymer, which the locals call the foundry (where they produce profiles for plastic windows). Natalya got hysterical while in captivity and asked the soldiers for her medicine for her blood pressure, but they refused.
Compressor room of the "Foundry" in Dymer
According to several prisoners, 65-year-old Bogdan and his 43-year-old son Denis were severely tortured. They were accused of carrying weapons. "They beat them all the time, broke ribs, hands, legs."
"The first day, I was beaten so badly I couldn't stand up,” tells Bogdan. “Every time they hit me, they asked where the weapon was. My son's upper jaw was completely knocked out. I already thought it would be better if they shot me than tortured me like that."
At different times in the compressor room of the foundry, there were from 22 to 43 people. According to the prisoners, there were people from Dymer and all nearby villages: Ivanovka, Kozarovichi, and Litvinovka. There was less than a square meter per detainee. There were barrels instead of toilets. The room had no windows, and the captives were always blindfolded. The only access to air and light was through cracks in the doors.
The prisoners slept on thin, dirty mattresses on the floor, huddled together to keep themselves warm in their sleep. There were few mattresses, so many slept on the concrete. According to one of the prisoners, one could only sleep on the floor for a couple of hours. Otherwise, it got too cold.
Sometimes the temperature in the room dropped to minus 12 degrees Celsius. They drank dirty water from a barrel. They sometimes brought soup in a bucket and sometimes porridge, which made detainees sick, but they were not given any medication. There were only a few spoons for everybody, and many had to eat with their hands.
Andriy, 52, was taken prisoner by Russian soldiers after a search of his house. The soldiers were looking for money, thinking he was cashing in by distributing humanitarian aid. During his captivity, one of the soldiers led him out for questioning: "He shot several times near my ear and asked if [I was] scared. I replied that I couldn't hear in that ear, and he said: "Bitch, you fucked up here, too..."
He hit me in the chest with the butt of his assault rifle, right in the middle. He asked about the army's positions, telling me that he knew everything about me, that I had been 'on the other side [for humanitarian aid] and therefore must know about the positions. I said I did not go to the military, but he did not believe me.
According to Andriy and another detainee, this same serviceman repeatedly referred to the NKVD (the much feared former Soviet interior ministry) while yelling at the prisoners. One evening the Russians were celebrating something, drinking. The Russian serviceman came into the room with the prisoners and shouted: "Now it's going to be like the NKVD, bitch, who wants to go to the firing squad first?" Then he shot several times, and one of the bullets hit a barrel the detainees were using as a toilet - urine started flowing out of it. After the shots were fired, he asked: "Why don't you say anything?" and left.
Dmytro, 73, and his wife had been living in the basement for a month since the start of Dymer's occupation. On March 28, his wife asked him to go to the Red Cross to get medicine. On the way, he was detained by Russian soldiers.
"They told me: 'Take off your clothes.' I undressed. They asked, 'Why are you looking around?'" I said, "I'm going home to my wife," Dmytro recalls.
"I couldn't even get up when he hit me in the face with the butt of his gun. He knocked out my teeth and broke my lower jaw. They put a hat over my eyes, tied it with duct tape, tied up my mouth and nose with tape, lifted me [from my knees], took me into the store, put me on a crate, and tied my legs together. I sat there for 24 hours.”
A prisoner's pit in the forest near Katyuzhanka
A day later, the Russian military took Dmytro and other detained Ukrainians to a dugout in the woods. Another day later, they were taken to a pit in Katyuzhanka. There were from eight to 13 civilians in the hole.
The pit was nine square meters in area and about two to two and a half meters deep. The prisoners were tied and blindfolded. One of them had scars on his hands from the ties four months after his release. There was no food or water. "It was cold in the pit; we were sitting on the wet sand. There were soldiers sitting upstairs, drinking. They said that they had come to change [our] government: 'You could negotiate with (former President Petro) Poroshenko and (former President Viktor) Yanukovych, but not with this one. "
Among those detained in the pit were two brothers: Ilya, 45, and Yegor, 37. The Russian military took them prisoners, thinking they were spies.
"They took us out of the car and started beating my brother and me," Ilya recalls. “One of them asked why we were aiming artillery, although we weren't aiming anything. They beat my brother with an axe. [...] One of the Russians told us [while we were in the pit] that some of us would go home, and they would take some with them. He said that they wouldn't let my brother go because he was supposedly a gunner, and they still had to think about me because I have a small child.“
On March 31, all prisoners were taken to a private house. The military told them not to leave the house until morning. When leaving, they took several detainees with them. One of them was Ilya's brother. There has been no information about him since
A Chinese artist has filmed about 40 of his coronavirus nucleic acid tests as a way to record living under a pandemic.
1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will not negotiate with Russia as long as…?
2. North Korea fired a missile over what country’s territory for the first time since 2017?
3. Slovenia became the first Eastern European country to break what civil rights barrier?
4. What did 433 people do at the same time in the Philippines that drew scrutiny from officials? Win the lottery / Give birth to triplets / Buy a yacht
[Answers at the bottom of this newsletter]
Maria Sole Ferrieri Caputi made history last Sunday by becoming the first female referee in Italy’s Serie A male soccer professional league. During the Sassuolo-Salernitana game, attention centered on how to refer to Ferrieri Caputi, given Italy’s highly-gendered language and mentality: Is she an “arbitro” (with masculine ending), “arbitra” (feminine ending) or “arbitro donna” (woman referee)? Most newspapers just ended up referring to her by her first name, Maria Sole — a common way of referring to women in the country, as even Giorgia Meloni, who is slated to become Italy’s first female prime minister, is simply Giorgia for Italy’s media. Italy’s online magazine L'Essenziale reports that Carolina Morace, a coach and former soccer player, said that linguists would pick “arbitra”: it may not sound right now, because it is new, but we need to slowly get used to it.
• Chinese artist turns COVID-19 tests into art work: Siyuan Zhuji, a 33-year-old artist from the Chinese Jiangsu province, has filmed about 40 of his coronavirus nucleic acid tests with a small camera in his mouth and will continue to do so, as long as testing is required, as a way to record living under a pandemic. “This work can represent this era. This is what I want to express. It is to record everyone’s current life,” the artist said.
• In memoriam: South Korean visual artist and illustrator Kim Jung Gi died of a heart attack at 47; Sacheen Littlefeather, the Native American actress and activist who had stood in for Marlon Brando to decline his Oscar for The Godfather, died at age 75; American country singer Loretta Lynn died at 90.
• Retracing Ethiopia’s archaeological history: Ethiopia’s president President Sahle-Work Zewde officially inaugurated a new permanent exhibition on the country’s archaeological history at the National Museum in the capital city Addis Ababa. Organized by the Ethiopian Heritage Authority in collaboration with the French Embassy, the exhibition will display objects from the first millennium BC to the 16th century.
• Rare photos of young Beatles uncovered: Rare images of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Pete Best, the Beatles’ original drummer, playing at the Cavern Club in Liverpool in July 1961 have been discovered. The previously unseen photographs were taken more than a year before the famous band released their debut single “Love Me Do” (and before they displayed the equally famous “Beatle haircut”).
• No Egyptian films at the 2023 Academy Awards: Egypt has announced it will not submit any movies for the Best International Feature Film category at the 2023 Academy Awards, due to some films’ non-compliance with the conditions and regulations of the competition and because others “did not live up to their expectations to be nominated for the Oscars.” Mohamed Hefzy, Egyptian producer, scriptwriter and member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences concluded: “The competition is very tough, and in my opinion when there aren’t any Oscar-worthy movies worth nominating it’s better to not nominate any.”
In the early days of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military moved quickly to the outskirts of Kyiv and began conducting searches and arrests there. Residents of three settlements have recounted to human rights activists in recent months how they had been detained, beaten, and tortured during the occupation.
These testimonies have formed the basis of the report “Unlawful Confinement and Torture in Dymer, Kozarovychi, and Katyuzhanka in Ukraine,” which Russian-language media Vazhnyye Istorii was able to read. Among the victims was Vladyslav, 29, who recounted how he was tortured and beat with a hammer on his fingers by Russian soldiers because they found photos of Russian equipment on his phone. “He threatened to cut my wrists. He hit my head hard, and I started screaming because it felt like my head would explode,” Vladyslav said.
Read the full story: "Better If They Shot Me" — New Details Revealed Of Russian Torture Of Civilians
Leftist candidate and former president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva and incumbent Jair Bolsonaro will face each other in the Brazilian elections runoff on Oct. 30. Despite Lula’s first-place finish with 48% of the votes and recent polls showing him trailing behind the head of the Workers Party, Bolsonaro also came close to convincing half the electorate.
“This tie-break situation is in fact an indicator of the socio-political direction Brazilian society has chosen,” writes Marcelo Cantelmi in Argentine daily Clarin, arguing that if he wants to win, Lula will have to garner votes from the center electoral and utter a real mea culpa over the massive corruption that marked his latter years as president.
Read the full story: What Lula Needs Now To Win: Move To The Center And Mea Culpa
China’s zero COVID is based on good intentions: to protect the health and lives of the public. During the first phase of the pandemic, and the onslaught of the Delta virus, the policy did serve to protect the population, bringing the spread under control to the greatest extent possible, and allowing the economy to recover quickly. But while Zero COVID has kept China's infection rate low since the emergence of the Omicron, the social costs, with strict lockdowns, large-scale COVID testing and social isolation, has long since surpassed its benefits.
So when will China end this policy? “The scenario most likely to end the harsh lockdowns are more signs that the economy simply can longer sustain it,” Deng Yuwen writes in Chinese-language media The Initium.
Read the full story: Xi's Burden — Why China Is Sticking With Zero COVID
A new bionic pancreas in trial at Harvard Medical School has proved to be more effective than pumps or injections at lowering blood glucose levels in people with type 1 diabetes. The device takes much of the burden off the patient, using an algorithm to calculate a meal’s carbohydrates and automatically releasing insulin.
British artist Sam Cox, known as Mr. Doodle for his hand-drawn cartoonish drawings, has spent the past two years covering his house in Kent in doodles, using 401 cans of black spray paint, 286 bottles of black drawing paint and 2,296 pen nibs. Cox immortalized his work with a stop motion video made out of nearly 2,000 photos taken while painting the house.
• Japan will drop its strict coronavirus border policy and reopen for international visitors on Oct. 11.
• Palestinian delegations, including Hamas and Fatah members, are expected in Algiers by the end of this week. They will hold roundtable talks in an effort to reach a unified Palestinian draft, to be presented at the upcoming Arab summit.
• Monday, Oct. 10 marks World Mental Health Day.
• As part of the Nintendo Live 2022, the Japanese video game maker announced it will stream two Japanese concerts in Tokyo (one Animal Crossing-themed and another for Splatoon 3).
1. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed an official decree stating that Kyiv would not conduct negotiations with Russia as long as Vladimir Putin is its president.
2. North Korea fired a suspected missile over Japan on Tuesday. It was for the first time tests invaded Japan’s air space since 2017, setting off a rare alert to some Japanese citizens to take cover.
3. The Slovenian parliament passed an amendment on Tuesday allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt, making it the first Eastern European country to do so.
4. In the Philippines, 433 people won the top prize of the country’s Grand Lotto on Saturday, drawing scrutiny from officials, including Philippines senate minority leader Koko Pimentel, who has called for an inquiry into the "suspicious" results.
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"And where is your grandson?" — "Who knows. He must be old by now."
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” U.S. President Joe Biden declared.
Central to the tragic absurdity of this war is the question of language. Vladimir Putin has repeated that protecting ethnic Russians and the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine was a driving motivation for his invasion.
Yet one month on, a quick look at the map shows that many of the worst-hit cities are those where Russian is the predominant language: Kharkiv, Odesa, Kherson.
Then there is Mariupol, under siege and symbol of Putin’s cruelty. In the largest city on the Azov Sea, with a population of half a million people, Ukrainians make up slightly less than half of the city's population, and Mariupol's second-largest national ethnicity is Russians. As of 2001, when the last census was conducted, 89.5% of the city's population identified Russian as their mother tongue.
Between 2018 and 2019, I spent several months in Mariupol. It is a rugged but beautiful city dotted with Soviet-era architecture, featuring wide avenues and hillside parks, and an extensive industrial zone stretching along the shoreline. There was a vibrant youth culture and art scene, with students developing projects to turn their city into a regional cultural center with an international photography festival.
There were also many offices of international NGOs and human rights organizations, a consequence of the fact that Mariupol was the last major city before entering the occupied zone of Donbas. Many natives of the contested regions of Luhansk and Donetsk had moved there, taking jobs in restaurants and hospitals. I had fond memories of the welcoming from locals who were quicker to smile than in some other parts of Ukraine. All of this is gone.
According to the latest data from the local authorities, 80% of the port city has been destroyed by Russian bombs, artillery fire and missile attacks, with particularly egregious targeting of civilians, including a maternity hospital, a theater where more than 1,000 people had taken shelter and a school where some 400 others were hiding.
The official civilian death toll of Mariupol is estimated at more than 3,000. There are no language or ethnic-based statistics of the victims, but it’s likely the majority were Russian speakers.
So let’s be clear, Putin is bombing the very people he has claimed to want to rescue.
Putin’s Public Enemy No. 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a mother-tongue Russian speaker who’d made a successful acting and comedy career in Russian-language broadcasting, having extensively toured Russian cities for years.
Rescuers carry a person injured during a shelling by Russian troops of Kharkiv, northeastern Ukraine.
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform via ZUMA Press Wire
Yes, the official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, and a 2019 law aimed to ensure that it is used in public discourse, but no one has ever sought to abolish the Russian language in everyday life. In none of the cities that are now being bombed by the Russian army to supposedly liberate them has the Russian language been suppressed or have the Russian-speaking population been discriminated against.
Sociologist Mikhail Mishchenko explains that studies have found that the vast majority of Ukrainians don’t consider language a political issue. For reasons of history, culture and the similarities of the two languages, Ukraine is effectively a bilingual nation.
"The overwhelming majority of the population speaks both languages, Russian and Ukrainian,” Mishchenko explains. “Those who say they understand Russian poorly and have difficulty communicating in it are just over 4% percent. Approximately the same number of people say the same about Ukrainian.”
In general, there is no problem of communication and understanding. Often there will be conversations where one person speaks Ukrainian, and the other responds in Russian. Geographically, the Russian language is more dominant in the eastern and central parts of Ukraine, and Ukrainian in the west.
Like most central Ukrainians I am perfectly bilingual: for me, Ukrainian and Russian are both native languages that I have used since childhood in Kyiv. My generation grew up on Russian rock, post-Soviet cinema, and translations of foreign literature into Russian. I communicate in Russian with my sister, and with my mother and daughter in Ukrainian. I write professionally in three languages: Ukrainian, Russian and English, and can also speak Polish, French, and a bit Japanese. My mother taught me that the more languages I know the more human I am.
At the same time, I am not Russian — nor British or Polish. I am Ukrainian. Ours is a nation with a long history and culture of its own, which has always included a multi-ethnic population: Russians, Belarusians, Moldovans, Crimean Tatars, Bulgarians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, Greeks. We all, they all, have found our place on Ukrainian soil. We speak different languages, pray in different churches, we have different traditions, clothes, and cuisine.
Like in other countries, these differences have been the source of conflict in our past. But it is who we are and will always be, and real progress has been made over the past three decades to embrace our multitudes. Our Jewish, Russian-speaking president is the most visible proof of that — and is in fact part of what our soldiers are fighting for.
Many in Moscow were convinced that Russian troops would be welcomed in Ukraine as liberating heroes by Russian speakers. Instead, young soldiers are forced to shoot at people who scream in their native language.
Starving people ina street of Kharkiv in 1933, during the famine
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Putin has tried to rally the troops by warning that in Ukraine a “genocide” of ethnic Russians is being carried out by a government that must be “de-nazified.”
These are, of course, words with specific definitions that carry the full weight of history. The Ukrainian people know what genocide is not from books. In my hometown of Kyiv, German soldiers massacred Jews en masse. My grandfather survived the Buchenwald concentration camp, liberated by the U.S. army. My great-grandmother, who died at the age of 95, survived the 1932-33 famine when the Red Army carried out the genocide of the Ukrainian middle class, and her sister disappeared in the camps of Siberia, convicted for defying rationing to try to feed her children during the famine.
On Tuesday, came a notable report of one of the latest civilian deaths in the besieged Russian-speaking city of Kharkiv: a 96-year-old had been killed when shelling hit his apartment building. The victim’s name was Boris Romanchenko; he had survived Buchenwald and two other Nazi concentration camps during World War II. As President Zelensky noted: Hitler didn’t manage to kill him, but Putin did.
Genocide has returned to Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Kherson to Mariupol, as Vladimir Putin had warned. But it is his own genocide against the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.