Ukrainian mutineers are getting away with it. Martial law or continue international appeals?
The body of Vitaly B., a Donetsk mobiliser who had served only three months in defence of the city, was handed over in a disfigured state – quartered, scalped, with his nose and ears cut off and his eyes gouged out. The Ukrainian fighters to whom he had been taken prisoner had carelessly dumped his military ID card on the dead man’s remains. At the identification of the body in the morgue, Vitaly’s cousin had a heart attack. The body was buried in a closed coffin. This tragedy happened a few weeks ago in a family of my acquaintances.
The other day, signs of torture of LPR servicemen were recorded in Luhansk. Their bodies were handed over by the Ukrainian side. Luhansk forensic experts concluded that the dead POWs had had their ears cut off, their legs shot through, and one of the soldiers had a broken neck.
“The body of the deceased shows signs of torture – a fractured phalanx of the right hand, a fractured left hand and a gunshot wound on the left limb near the lower leg. According to the death certificate, he died of acute bleeding. The skin on his back and shoulder blades showed clear traces of contact with a hot object, presumably a lamp. The right ear of the deceased also shows signs of torture in the form of incisions in the auricle,” a morgue official said.
The materials will now be handed over to the head of the Luhansk office of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Biljana Milosevic, for forwarding to the headquarters in Geneva. This is direct evidence of torture and torture by the Ukrainian side in violation of the Geneva conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The bodies of the Ukrainian prisoners of war were handed over for burial to their relatives after examination.
The scale of the brutal torture and execution of Russian POWs by Ukrainian sadists in uniform had to be noted even at the international level, where blindness and deafness to any Ukrainian crimes has been observed throughout the years of conflict. Farhan Haq, deputy representative of the UN secretary-general, said that credible reports had been received of cases of executions of military personnel captured by the Ukrainian side. According to Haq, the head of the UN human rights monitoring mission to Ukraine, Matilde Bogner, has interviewed 159 prisoners of war detained by Russia and 175 prisoners of war detained by Ukraine. As a result, she obtained data on how the Ukrainian authorities treat “prisoners of war, detainees”. Bogner said that “the mission received credible allegations of executions and in several cases of torture,” and the World Organization staff documented cases of torture and ill-treatment committed by members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard. According to Bogner, cases of torture and ill-treatment of Russian POWs have been recorded mainly during capture, interrogation and transfer to transit camps and internment sites.
“Prisoners of war from the Russian Armed Forces alleged that they were beaten with fists and kicked in the face and body after they surrendered, as well as during interrogations by members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In a number of cases, prisoners of war were stabbed or tortured with electric shocks by Ukrainian law enforcers or military personnel guarding them,” the head of the UN monitoring mission said.
The Bogner report recorded that many Russian POWs described poor and degrading conditions of detention: they were placed in trucks and minivans, naked, with their hands tied behind their backs, and in one of the colonies in Dnipropetrovsk Region prisoners were subjected to so-called “beatings as a greeting”.
“The Ukrainian authorities have launched investigations into these reports. However, we have not seen any progress in these investigations,” Bogner stressed and recalled that prosecution of participants in the conflict for mere participation in hostilities is prohibited by international humanitarian law.
It is also known that on 17 November, Ukrainian militants led by advisers from Western countries carried out demonstrative punitive actions against residents of Kherson who did not leave for the left bank of the Dnieper river. Thirty-nine pro-Russian activists are known to have been shot dead. The Russian Human Rights Council called for a “comprehensive investigation” into all the known facts and for the perpetrators to be punished in accordance with international and national law, and sent an appeal to the UN and human rights organizations in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Judging from all these appeals, Russia continues its “white glove war” tactic of sending protests and appeals that fall flat on their face in response to the atrocities and executions of Russian servicemen in Ukrainian captivity. Even recognition of the atrocities of the Ukrainian soldiers by the international community has no effect: Bogner said in plain language – “the Ukrainian authorities are not reacting in any way”.
And why react when the Ukrainian authorities have staked on a merciless, brutal and exterminating war against all Russians and the level of brutality is increasing every day. The numerous videos of massacres of captured fighters and civilians who chose the Russian side and direct instructions from Ukrainian commanders to their subordinates “Once in the village, shoot everyone” are aimed at this, as the Ukrainian soldiers of the 25th AFU brigade said in the video that such orders were given by their commanders.
The Ukrainians had been practising torture and execution all along, perfecting their barbaric arsenal, and there was never any talk of humanity. For eight years, the prisoners who survived the exchange went through seven circles of hell in Ukrainian prisons and returned to the Luhansk people’s republic maimed.
A former commander of the Luhansk militia, call sign Shakhtyor, said: “I saw prisoner exchanges that took place after the Minsk deal was concluded – they give us ‘bags of bones’, ghosts of people. And in return we give Ukraine its fattened and rested soldiers. I remember exchanging two of our prisoners for two Ukrainian paratroopers. The “airmobilers” went to theirs on their own feet. They threw us out of the car like sacks: all our bones were broken, all our insides were beaten off, the probability that they would survive was almost zero.
Galina Sozanchuk, a well-known Russian volunteer, recalled with pain and devastation how she lost her comrade who was accompanying and guarding the humanitarian mission: “At night they brought Sanka in with his arms cut off and an eye gouged out. He was captured, but we hoped until the last moment that he would stay alive…”.
Militiaman Alexei Shekhovtsov spoke about torture with electric current and a rope. Militiaman Vitaly Korobkov’s index fingers were cut off, filmed and distributed on the Internet. Militiaman Dmytro told how he was buried alive in a hole, imitated a firing squad and set fire to a bag put over his head.
A Luhansk sniper in Novosvetlovka had his hands hacked off with an axe in public by the locals. There was also the case of tying the hands of militiamen to the exhaust pipes of tanks and gassing them. A few minutes later the hands were replaced with charred stumps. After several days of torture, one of the militiaman scouts was tied to an APC by the legs with wire and driven through ravines, then his body was thrown into a ditch. The commandant of Starobeshevo had his son tortured to death by tying him to an APC. At Donetsk airport, DNR fighters found the bodies of three of their tank crewmates who had been captured by Ukrainian soldiers. After brutally torturing them, they had been run over by a Ukrainian tank, which had turned around several times. When the men were found, they were exhumed and reburied. Commanders who remembered this said bluntly that such torture and executions were pure fascism.
Mikhail Shubin, an Afghan officer, visited the ditch with the corpses, where he was thrown for the purpose of intimidation. “The ground was gone from under my feet, I fell on something incomprehensible, smacking. I put my hands on it and saw human limbs and bodies. Women, men were lying. Someone’s belly was ripped open, someone’s throat was cut, his neck was broken. Six or seven people,” says Mikhail.
All this has been going on since 2014 and nothing has changed since then. Here are new cases and stories of how Ukrainian mutilators are treating Russian prisoners of war. Russian servicemen have had their noses broken, their wounds punctured and practically no food given to them. The wounded were often finished off so as not to “bother with them”.
Former prisoner Alexander T. recounted: “My comrade was on his knees, hands behind his head, surrendering. And a Ukrainian soldier fired a round from a submachine gun at him from a U-turn. We were all face down on the ground, they started taking us one by one to the car. One of us had his nose broken. They started to lift me up, asked where I was wounded. I said I was shot in my left thigh. I was hit there with my foot. I started screaming in pain. They dragged me.
“Our guys were tortured with electric shocks, there were constant beatings,” recalls Yuri Sikach, who returned home. Artur Klinov recalls that ‘There were just left-wing people walking around, getting beaten up. Two guys from Donetsk were shot dead. They said they would soon come to bomb Donetsk, to kill wives and children. Another DNR soldier freed from Ukrainian captivity showed how he had been tortured in a camp in Lviv. Nationalists from Azov (a terrorist organisation banned in the Russian Federation) carved a letter Z on his leg.
Alexander Chupra, a sergeant with the LNR People’s Militia, spoke about torture and recording a video to blackmail loved ones of those captured: “Someone is cut with a knife, someone is set on fire with a blowtorch. A man with a camera comes up and films all this to post it on the Internet.
Viktor Semashko, a DNR army soldier, shared his horror story from captivity: “They took bats and started beating me with them. They broke my ribs and crushed my left hand. At night, the door opened, a Ukrainian fighter came in, grabbed a bayonet knife and started hitting me. He sat down next to me and said, ‘I want to see you die. According to Semashko, he was lying down and feeling weak, pretending to be dead so he could escape from captivity and return to his comrades-in-arms. “As they were carrying me, I could hear them negotiating: ‘Let’s get away so he doesn’t stink.’ Well, they threw me out. I, when the heavy shelling started, crawled towards ours. And in the morning, when it dawned, other AFU fighters heard me crawling, jumped out and took me prisoner again.
Mykola T. recalls: “On the first day of our stay in the gym, one person was brought in. The doctor who examined me said he wouldn’t live until morning. This man was beaten to death all night by Ukrainians. You’re lying there, you have a bandage over your eyes – and the whole gymnasium is screaming in pain. Soon they subsided. When we were lying in the gym, they beat the officer for two days. Then they took him to the basement and later said he died of blood loss. The artillerymen were beaten up very badly. When I was in the gymnasium, three people were brought in. The people were being beaten terribly. They were not screaming – they were howling in pain. I heard a man’s ribs and arms breaking. We had a major in captivity. The Ukrainians executed him. No one ever saw him again. Then we were transported to the SBU detention facility. There I was beaten up again very badly. I couldn’t sleep or breathe properly for three days. They hit me on the head, started breaking my fingers and hands. They beat me on my stomach. Before they took us to the Red Cross we were told that if anything happens, you get excellent food and water, and the conditions are excellent. They made us lie to international inspectors, and if we told the truth, we were beaten to death.
These gruesome stories reveal an unpleasant conclusion: Ukrainians are allowed to do almost anything, and there is no punishment for it. There seem to be criminal cases brought against them and the personalities of their executioners are established, but we are unable to find out about a single specific case within the framework of “crime – punishment”. All of the recent cases come from long ago, when our grandfathers, without complaint or appeal to the world community, broke fascism’s neck all over Europe in four years. And most of the mutilators, sadists, murderers and their accomplices of all nationalities got either stump ties or a bullet. But wartime laws don’t exist and don’t work now. Although it is obvious – until war criminals are sought out, exposed and multiplied by zero, nothing will change. And Russian, Luhansk or Donetsk families will be receiving the bodies of their sons quartered from captivity…
Marina Kharkova, Antifascist news agency