Exclusive: Four women tell The Telegraph about the campaign of abuse they were subjected to in captivity

Verity Bowman

20 February 2025

Ukrainian women taken as prisoners of war are being tortured and humiliated by Russian soldiers in a systematic campaign of abuse, survivors have revealed.

Some have been subjected to cruel degradations, including being forced to march naked in the snow and expose themselves to their captors.

The Telegraph tracked down four women who agreed to speak out about the months and, in some cases, years they spent in captivity.

Their testimonies reveal the brutality with which Moscow’s forces treat the Ukrainians they have captured, providing evidence of what are almost certainly war crimes.

“They led us to the showers with bags over our heads, where we were forced to undress. We had to walk naked in front of the men and everyone else, bent over, through freezing cold water,” said Larysa Kycherenko, 53, who served in Ukraine’s National Guard.

“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.”

While they make up a small minority of the total number of POWs captured by Russia, women like Ms Kycherenko say the threats they faced were different to those of the men imprisoned alongside them.

“If it’s hard for men, it’s even harder for women – many of the women weren’t fighters,” she said.

Ms Kycherenko, her husband and her 34-year-old son were captured in occupied Mariupol in 2022 after they were betrayed by their neighbours.

The three were separated, with Ms Kycherenko spending seven months in captivity, first in a makeshift prison near Donetsk, then Olinevka prison, then a pre-trial detention centre.

During her ordeal, Ms Kycherenko was forced to stand for over 12 hours a day, beaten, and psychologically tortured – in an apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.

She described being “slammed” against the wall by a guard and beaten with a metal pole, and then being denied medical treatment for the open wound it left on her leg.

“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.”

Since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine, it has been repeatedly accused of mistreating prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians.

At least 48 detention centres have been identified by the United Nations, while Ukraine’s Prosecutor General reported that at least nine out of ten POWs returned to the country suffered physical and psychological torture.

“I was prepared for the possibility that I might die. I had come to terms with it. But when I was told about captivity, that was the first time I cried,” said Valentyna Zubko, a 32-year-old military medic who was captured at the Illich Steel Plant during the siege of Mariupol.

She spent five-and-a-half months in captivity across four different prisons.

She described being crammed with fifteen others in a cell meant to house two, with only a hole in the middle of the floor as a toilet.

The UN’s Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has accused Russia of using a form of torture called the “tiny train”, in which POWs are forced to line up, stooped over, and walk between guards who beat them.

Ms Zubko confirmed that she had been subjected to the practice.

“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.”

Every day the women were forced into stress positions – another form of torture where prisoners are forced to hold agonising postures – for hours at a time, and made to do near-impossible exercise routines supervised by guards who would beat them if they failed to keep up.

“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,” she said. “Every day your only task is to survive.”

Ms Zubko and her fellow prisoners were fed porridge mixed with water, which she said was barely enough to survive. “We were like skeletons,” she said.

Ms Zubko and several women The Telegraph spoke to reported being given electric shocks by cattle prods and power cables during the repeated interrogations.

“During interrogations, if I answered in a way they didn’t like, they would electrocute me,” said Snizhana Vasylivna Ostapenko, 23, a junior sergeant of the 56th Separate Mechanised Brigade who fought in the battles for Mariupol and the Azovstal steel plant.

She was captured on May 16, 2022, and released after five months in Olenivka prison.

Loudspeakers blasted the Russian national anthem into her cramped cell around the clock to deprive her of sleep in between interrogation sessions lasting several hours.

“Sleep was impossible for days at a time,” she said. “The guards even told us, “We’re feeding you just enough so you don’t die.” It was like they were keeping us alive, and nothing more. They were trying to starve us slowly.”

Guards routinely held knives to her neck and took her outside to show her where they would “bury her body” after killing her. They spread falsified news about Ukrainian defeat and told her she had no country to return to and no chance of release.

Ms Ostapenko was in Olenivka prison on July 29, when an explosion in one of the barracks killed 50 Ukrainian POWs and injured 100 more – an incident that became known as the Olenivka Prison Massacre.

Moscow blamed the massacre on a HIMARS missile launched by Ukraine, but both the United Nations and Ukraine have disputed their claims.

“Well before the explosion, the guards suddenly disappeared,” said Ms Ostapenko. “They were usually around, but this time, they weren’t. We all noticed and found it suspicious.”

Russia has not met its obligations under the Geneva Conventions to impartially investigate the incident as a possible war crime.

Lyudmila Huseynova, 61, was detained by Russia in 2019, surviving captivity for three years and 13 days – all for sharing a photograph she took of a resistance flag with people she thought were friends.

During her time in captivity, Ms Huseynova was sexually assaulted by a gang of guards and witnessed the rapes of numerous women by soldiers.

“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,” she said as she recounted her capture.

“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.”

Ms Huseynova said that for the first 50 days she was kept in a tiny cell she likened to a “torture chamber” alongside 20 other women, with no sanitation and little food. Like others she was forced to stand for over 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.

Russian guards, watching via a camera in the corner of the cell, threw open the door.

“They started yelling, shouting, ‘you have to stand’. But I couldn’t quickly because I was undressed. He grabbed me by the leg and threw me from the top bunk bed onto the concrete floor. I fell, but they continued to kick me. Later I took off my clothes and saw that my body was black.”

Younger girls would be taken to a dormitory where Russian soldiers stayed.

“When they returned, they cried,” said Ms Huseynova. Other women were often raped by soldiers who promised they would get food or see their children again, she said.

“I heard terrible screams. I could hear people beating and people were screaming. It was such a horror. In my life, even when I was already beaten, it was not as horrible as listening to this.”

Almost three years later, Ms Kycherenko has still not been reunited with her husband or son, who are still in captivity. She is kept awake at night by the thought of them suffering in the same way she did.

“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.”