Irina Pogorelaya14:31, 10.02.25

In the first weeks of the war, Russian prison authorities gave their subordinates instructions in which restrictions on violence and cruelty were lifted.

Immediately after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the authorities of all Russian prisons directly ordered the elite security unit that controlled the influx of  captured Ukrainians to treat them cruelly and without mercy.

An exclusive article by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) details that Russian prison guards even developed a whole system of treatment for captured Ukrainian soldiers, which General Igor Potapenko told his subordinates about. The publication noted that Russian prison guards were allowed not to apply the usual rules to Ukrainians and not to limit themselves in the use of violence. At the same time, the chest cameras of the Russian penitentiary system servants have completely disappeared.

The publication noted that prison guards across Russia received similar instructions, which marked the beginning of merciless and cruel torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. “Guards used electric shocks on prisoners’ genitals until the batteries ran out.

They beat prisoners to inflict maximum damage, experimenting to find out which beating material caused the most pain. They refused treatment to cause gangrene, forcing amputations,” the publication described the abuse.

Three former Russian prison officials told the publication how Russia planned and carried out large-scale and systematic torture.

The publication noted that the elite security unit took Potapenko’s instructions as a carte blanche to commit violence, two former guards said.

They took their abuse of Ukrainians to a new level, believing they had permission from their superiors, one of the former guards said.

Guards wore balaclavas at all times while on duty. Prisoners were beaten if they looked a guard in the eye. These measures, along with monthly rotations of guards in prisons, were taken to ensure that they would not be recognized, one former officer said.

The publication noted that the Russian Federation began preparing to receive Ukrainian prisoners of war back in March 2022. According to documents and the words of one of the former prison employees, letters were sent to prison authorities across Russia with orders to clear floors and even entire prisons.

Pavel Afisov, captured in the city of Mariupol at the start of the war, was one of the first Ukrainian prisoners detained in Russia. The 25-year-old was transferred from prison to prison for 2.5 years before being exchanged in October 2024.

He said the beatings were worst when he was transferred to new prisons. After arriving at a prison in the Tver region, guards took him to a medical examination room and ordered him to strip naked.

They shocked him repeatedly with a stun gun while shaving his head and beard. When it was over, he was told to shout “glory to Russia, glory to the special forces,” and then ordered to go to the front of the room – still naked – and sing the Russian and Soviet national anthems. When he said he didn’t know the words, the guards beat him again with their fists and batons.

According to former guards and human rights activists, violence against Ukrainians was used to make them pliable for interrogation and break their will to fight. Interrogations at the prison were sometimes aimed at extracting confessions to war crimes or obtaining intelligence from prisoners who had no will to resist after being subjected to extreme brutality.

The brutality made them more likely to submit to Russian interrogators and drained “any will or ability to fight again if they were ever replaced,” said Vladimir Osechkin, who heads the human rights group Gulagu.net.

Former guards described a staggering level of violence directed at Ukrainian prisoners.

Tasers were used so frequently, especially in showers, that officers complained that their batteries ran out too quickly.

One former prison official said prison guards beat Ukrainians until their batons broke. They then tested other materials, including insulated hot water pipes, for their ability to cause pain and damage.

He said guards would deliberately beat prisoners in the same place day after day, preventing bruises from healing and causing infection within the accumulated hematoma. This led to blood poisoning and muscle tissue rotting.

The officer said he knew of one case where a prisoner died of sepsis. Many guards enjoyed the cruelty and often bragged about the pain they inflicted on Ukrainian prisoners, he added.

Former Ukrainian prisoner Andrei Yegorov, 25, recalled that guards constantly beat them with their fists or clubs. “They enjoyed it, you could hear them laughing among themselves while we screamed in pain,” he said.

Two of the longest-held POWs, Afisov and Yegorov, spent nearly 30 months in Russian custody before they were finally released as part of the exchange.

During a medical examination after the exchange, Egorov learned that he had broken five vertebrae.

He is undergoing treatment and meeting with a hospital-appointed psychologist. But he is skeptical that a psychologist can help. “If you haven’t been through what I’ve been through, you can’t help me,” Egorov said.

The publication noted that the employees of Russian prisons who agreed to reveal the monstrous reality about Ukrainian prisoners of war fled the Russian Federation and were forced to stop communicating with people they had known all their lives.

One of them said he had always been a patriot and never wanted to live anywhere but Russia. But after the war began, he could not stay in the country or keep quiet. He said testifying at the ICC was one way to get justice.

(C)UNIAN 2025