Beyond humanity

Ivan Dibrova, a Ukrainian marine captured by Russian forces in April 2022, recounts the hell he went through at a press conference organised by Ukrainian NGO Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR) on 29 April to present the findings of its report, The Technologies of Terror, based on 40 accounts of Ukrainian prisoners of war who endured torture in Russian captivity.

Ivan’s voice is steady, unnervingly so. He will recall crawling on elbows and knees more than once during the press conference. It seems to have become a standard procedure: pain alone wasn’t enough without humiliation.

Torture as routine

The same day the MIHR report was published, Ukrainian independent newspaper Ukrainska Pravda published a searing investigation as part of the international Viktoria Project, a collaborative effort by leading global media outlets spearheaded by Forbidden Stories in Paris.

The project was named in honour of Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who died in Russian custody in September under circumstances so grotesque they defy belief. Her mummified body was returned to Ukraine with the eyes removed, the brain and part of the larynx missing, and the hyoid bone broken — a method pathologists say is often used to conceal signs of strangulation. A DNA test, carried out at her family’s insistence, confirmed the remains were hers.

Roshchyna’s death was a breaking point. Investigative journalists from 13 countries took up her cause, conducting interviews with 48 survivors of Russian captivity and four former prison employees. Human rights experts and Russian civil society activists corroborated the systemic abuse.

On Ukrainian television, Ukrainska Pravda editor-in-chief Sevgil Musayeva recently reminded viewers that Russian forces are detaining Ukrainian civilians in 186 prisons across Russia and the occupied territories. “In 29 of them, torture is practised regularly — barbaric, inhumane torture,” she said. “People are stripped naked and left alone with trained dogs. They are plunged into freezing water until they convulse. Suspended upside down, electrocuted until they ‘confess.’”

“In some places,” she added, “people are given human bones to ‘play with’. I heard this directly from lawyers representing our citizens. In others, detainees are made to lie in metal coffins and are beaten with sticks.”

Circles of hell

“Our soldiers are often the only witnesses to what happens to civilians in Russian custody,” said Maria Klymyk, an analyst with MIHR. “Civilians are rarely released. And torture does not discriminate — gender, age, or health make no difference.”

Dibrova, 24, who was returned to Ukraine on 15 January in a swap of critically ill prisoners, lost 35kg in captivity, his body battered from beatings with truncheons, metal rods, boots and fists. And yet, he considers himself lucky — he lived.

He was captured on 12 April 2022 during the defence of Mariupol. His first “initiation” — which every prisoner undergoes when arriving at a new prison — occurred in Olenivka, a notorious detention facility in the Donetsk region, where dozens of Azov fighters were extrajudicially executed in a July 2022 explosion.

“They formed two lines — about 15 men on each side, armed with belts, chains, sticks,” Ivan recalled. “They shouted ‘Run!’ and as you ran, they struck you until you collapsed. Then they kept beating you on the ground.”

From there, they were taken to Sukhodilsk in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, and then to the airport, where a plane brought them to the small city of Vyazma — home to one of the many prison camps scattered across the country.

Now deep in Russian territory, the newly arrived prisoners of war were held for 12 hours in a basement, again forced to stay on their elbows and knees. Detainees were summoned one by one for interrogation. Dibrova describes what happened when his turn came:

“They ripped off the tape covering my face. Two enormous men in military gear stood there with an administrator in blue khaki. They pinned me against a wall and hit me on the back with a rubber truncheon. Then they turned me around so I was facing them and saw my tattoo — wings, a symbol of freedom — on my chest. ‘Fascist! Nazi!’ they shouted. They knocked me to the floor. One of them stepped on my head with a size-45 boot, while the other pressed a stun gun to my genitals, to my legs. I passed out three or four times — they doused me with water and kept going.”

Dibrova was beaten during a forced haircut, lashed for his tattoo and shoved into a freezing shower “to wash off the blood”. Even there, a soldier appeared with a taser: he wanted to see what electricity would do to a wet body.

Later, he was handed prison clothes and a mattress. Another official grabbed him by the neck and began kicking him repeatedly. “Tell us everything,” the man growled. “Though we already know it all.”

They took his fingerprints, applied more shocks to his genitals, then threw him into a cell and told him to memorise the Russian national anthem by morning.

Thirty months of darkness

The subsequent months — Dibrova spent a total of 30 months in Russian captivity — blurred into a litany of abuse: roll calls, beatings, standing for 16 hours at a stretch and repeated indoctrination. They were forced to memorise and recite patriotic Russian texts and endure recruitment efforts from Federal Security Service (FSB) officers, Dibrova recalls. Those deemed “re-educated” were invited to join the so-called Bogdan Khmelnitsky Battalion — a propaganda unit of Ukrainian prisoners fighting for Russia. “Only the utterly broken agreed,” Dibrova says.

“Five men died from disease and torture. Then a new group arrived, all with acute tuberculosis. We were crammed together. I got infected too. We were treated like animals — dragged out on all fours for brief corridor walks, boots crushing our infected fingers,” he continues.

On his birthday, they gave him a “gift”: they beat him so severely he urinated blood for two weeks. “But the worst,” Dibrova says, “was hearing others scream. One lad — they beat him, then tied him to a chair, tortured him, and cut off one of his testicles. Just one guard ever said, ‘I don’t want to do this — we’re human, after all’. He quit.”

According to Klymyk, torture was carried out not only by guards but also by FSB agents, investigators, and military police. “This is not misconduct. This is Russian state policy.”

Over 8,000 Ukrainians are held in Russian prisons, including 1,600 civilians. As of mid-April, over 63,000 people remain listed as missing under extraordinary circumstances, according to the Ukrainian human rights centre Zmina. And each new prisoner who comes home in an exchange only reveals more horror.