Ukrainian men describe rape hell in Putin’s worst prison: Stripped naked on arrival. Constant ‘nightmare ‘animal’ screams’. And how Russians codenamed different sexual abuses ‘calling Biden’ or ‘calling Zelensky’

Ukrainian soldiers and civilians who were captured and shipped off to detention centres amid Russia’s invasion of their country have spoken about a sick campaign of sexual abuse they suffered at the hands of their captors.

One Ukrainian prisoner, Oleksii Sivak, said that electrocution of the genitals was one of the Russians’ favourite methods to demoralise their prey.

Sivak, a former sailor, was arrested by Russians in his home town of Kherson in 2022 after they discovered he was cooking meals for elderly residents who were unable to get food and hanging up Ukrainian flags at a soup kitchen.

He was promptly consigned to a ‘temporary detention facility’ – a building seized by Russians that was transformed into an interrogation and torture chamber.

‘They wanted to humiliate me. It’s obvious. What do you do to cause a man the most pain? You hurt his wife or his genitals,’ he said.

Sivak went on to explain how his captors took pleasure in meting out sadistic punishments by coming up with codenames for their torture methods. They were typically snide references to former US President Joe Biden and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.

Connecting the wires of a phone or military radio to a detainee’s anus to administer electric shocks was referred to as ‘calling Biden’, Sivak claimed.

When the wires were connected to the detainee’s genitals, the guards said they were ‘calling Zelensky’.

Another detainee, 22-year-old Illya Illiashenko, told Le Monde that the sexual violence inflicted on him left him doubtful that he could ever have kids. 

Illiashenko was one of many Ukrainian soldiers captured amid Russia’s siege of the Azovstal steel plant near Mariupol in 2022 who ended up in an infamous detention centre in Taganrog, a city in southern Russia just 50 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

He recounted how he was promptly stripped, forced against a wall and beaten between his legs with a hammer following his arrival.

‘Another time, they stripped me and threw me on the ground. They attached electric clamps to my anus and genitals, and administered electric shocks while shouting: ‘What were you doing in Mariupol? Who gave you orders?’.’

One Ukrainian prisoner, Oleksii Sivak, said that electrocution of the genitals was one of the Russians’ favourite methods to demoralise their prey

Illia Illiashenko, who was captured by Russian forces in Mariupol in 2022, poses for a photograph in Lucerne, Switzerland June 15, 2024 after being released

Prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Taganrog’s ‘Pre-Trial Detention Facility Number Two’ was used to house Russian prisoners. It is now a hellhole jail for captured Ukrainians

Pictured: A view from a preliminary detention centre which, as Ukrainians say, was used by Russian service members to jail and torture people, before they retreated from Kherson, Ukraine

Sivak and Illiashenko were both eventually released – the former when Russian forces retreated from Kherson, and Illiashenko in a prisoner exchange. 

They have since gone on to form NGOs that aim to provide psychological and legal support to fellow prisoners of war and civilian detainees.

Sivak launched the Ukrainian Men’s Network, an organisation that encourages victims of abuse in Russian captivity to share their experiences in group therapy sessions.

‘We remind each other that we’re not alone. In captivity, your cellmate could always help you — maybe just by shaking your hand or giving you water when you couldn’t get up.

‘Why shouldn’t we continue helping each other here, too?’ Sivak told Ukrainian outlet Rubryka.

‘We want people who come out of captivity not to go through the same difficult path we did… We want their recovery to be more comprehensive and faster so they can reintegrate into society much sooner.’

Unfortunately, Sivak’s organisation is likely to be extremely busy for years to come. 

According to a UN report published in February, 95% of released Ukrainian PoWs interviewed by the Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU) provided accounts of torture or ill-treatment during interrogation and throughout their time in Russian captivity.

Just over half of those interviewed also said they were subjected to sexual violence. 

Russia’s penal colonies have long had a reputation for using rape and sexual abuse to bully, humiliate and brutalise inmates. 

In recent years, a haul of footage depicting this tactic in graphic detail has been leaked by former prisoners, with videos documenting the ordeals of several men who were tied down before being savagely violated with various implements including batons and broom handles.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Ukrainian PoWs and civilians are also subjected to such treatment. 

One former prisoner who spoke to the New York Times on condition of anonymity said some prisoners were forced to choose the implement with which they would be penetrated. 

He said he was given a choice between a mop handle or the leg of a chair, and although the guards never followed through with it, he confirmed many of his fellow prisoners were subjected to the savage abuse. 

‘After that, you cannot walk normally,’ he said. ‘You suffer for weeks. Other guys had the same treatment.’

‘I think they had such an order to break us psychologically and physically so that we would not want anything else in life.’

Sivak told Le Monde that while in captivity, he would routinely hear ‘animal-like’ cries from other inmates being abused.

‘I heard people’s screams, it was a nightmare, it sounded like animal screams,’ he recalled.

‘When it comes to sexual violence, the Russians were very sophisticated. It was like a game to them.’

Electronic equipment sits on a table in a building Ukrainian civilians said they were detained and tortured by Russian soldiers in Kherson, Ukraine

This photo provided by Ukrainian investigators in 2023 shows a baton found a building used by Russian forces in Izium, Ukraine

A general view of the basement and rooms as officers of the War Crimes Prosecutor office and police officers investigate war crimes committed by the Russian occupying forces in Kherson

Sexual violence was not only recorded in jails and detention centres on Russian soil – they were also used as a tool by the invaders to demoralise locals in occupied Ukraine. 

Prosecutors examining dozens of reported cases of rape describe a ‘systematic’ use of sexual violence to force the Ukrainian people into submission.

‘We see it over and over again in different regions under occupation. They use the same method of committing sexual violence, the same method of humiliation, the same method of how they explain it to their victims,’ said Anna Sosonska, a Ukrainian prosecutor and the acting chief of the conflict-related sexual violence division in Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General. 

UN investigators appeared to concur with Sosonska, issuing a report in March 2024 that detailed the ‘systematic’ nature of sexual abuse. 

But many prosecutors and human rights activists fear many more cases of rape and sexual violence perpetrated against Ukrainian women and men will only come to light if Russian-occupied territories are liberated.

‘Unfortunately, I think we are still only seeing the tip of the iceberg,’ Yulia Gorbunova, a lawyer and senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, told MailOnline.

‘It’s becoming increasingly difficult to get information out of these occupied areas like Mariupol but I do believe that the horrific abuses that we’ve seen before are still happening there on a daily basis and that we will find more and more evidence of war crimes going on.’

Sexual abuse is just one of the various methods employed to physically and psychologically break detainees, with many of them claiming they ‘lost the will to live’ after months of being subjected to all manner of horrific treatment.

The majority of Ukrainian PoWs that have been returned to Ukraine after enduring months or in some cases years of captivity in Russia all have one thing in common.

Upon their arrival back in their homeland, the former captees are almost invariably emaciated, their cheekbones protruding out under paper-thin skin and their eyes bulging out of sunken sockets.

Harrowing images released by Ukrainian organisation ‘I Want To Live’ unveiled perhaps one of the most egregious cases of starvation of a Ukrainian prisoner at the hands of Russian guards.

Debris lies on the floor of a building used by Russian forces where civilians said they were held and tortured, in Izium, Ukraine

Ukrainian prisoners of war caught by pro-Russian forces near Volnovakha, Donetsk

Roman, one of 74 prisoners returned to Ukraine in May. Despite allegedly having no involvement in the fighting, Roman was ‘taken hostage’ by Russian forces in March 2022

The condition of Roman Vasiliovich Gorilyk, one of 74 prisoners exchanged in a prisoner swap on May 31, 2024, appeared almost indistinguishable from that of deathly thin Jews liberated from Nazi concentration camps – a comparison highlighted by the organisation itself.

Gorilyk, a senior controller at Chernobyl power plant, was taken hostage in March 2022 and spent more than two years in a Russian jail.

Every sinew, tendon and bone could be seen creaking beneath mottled skin, which in places sported what looked like burns and torture wounds.

Each one of his vertebrae could be counted at a glance, and his head appeared almost too large for his tiny, shrivelled torso.

According to investigators from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), more than 80 per cent of returning Ukrainian prisoners complained about the quantity of food, and claimed the meals they were given were often rotten or contained sand and small rocks.

Others described being given just 250g canned food a day for up to three months, while some said that food was used as a weapon of torture, describing how they were force-fed burning hot meals which singed their mouths, tongues and throats.

The detention centre in Taganrog that housed Azovstal captive Illiashenko has garnered a reputation among Ukrainian detainees for some of the most brutal treatment.

Here, guards reportedly take great pleasure in tormenting and torturing the inmates.

Artem Dyblenko, a sergeant major in Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, told the BBC he overheard Russian guards talking about playing football with their charges and was initially intrigued by the idea.

But instead of Russians vs Ukrainians, the game of ‘football’ saw Artem blindfolded and ordered to run.

When he inevitably tripped or was pushed to the ground, the Russian guards would pile in, kicking him around the turf before ordering him to his feet – only to repeat the process over and over.

‘There were constant kicks. You did feel like a football,’ he said.

The detention centre in Taganrog that housed Azovstal captive Illiashenko has garnered a reputation among Ukrainian detainees for some of the most brutal treatment 

Soviet-era gas masks lie on the floor at the corridor of School No. 2 which was used as a Russian military base and torture site in Izium, Ukraine

Besides the game of ‘football’, inmates in the southern city of Taganrog were regularly and consistently subjected to beatings with batons, chairs and whatever blunt instruments their captors could lay hands on. 

Several Ukrainians are said to have died at the facility, having suffered heart attacks or severe trauma left unattended by prison doctors. 

Prior to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Taganrog’s ‘Pre-Trial Detention Facility Number Two’ was used to house Russian prisoners.

From the outside, the buildings look fairly nondescript – a few small turquoise and red-brick blocks set just off one of the city’s main streets surrounded by beauty parlours, a petrol station and adverts for a children’s centre providing art, mathematics and English lessons. 

But behind the flimsy metal gates and rusty barbed wire fences, a sinister machine of systematic brutality and terror operates to punish, degrade and in some cases eliminate Ukrainian soldiers.

Artem Seredniak, a 27-year-old sniper platoon leader from the Azov Regiment, was a prime target for sadistic torment after being seized. 

Stripped down to his underwear, he was thrown into an interrogation chamber where electric shock devices were forced into his back, neck and groin.

The jolts coursed through his body as ruthless guards demanded details about his military role, accused him of looting Mariupol, and attempted to extract social media details of his girlfriend.

‘They hammered you like a nail,’ Seredniak recalled.

In the midst of Mariupol’s Russian siege last year, hundreds of beleaguered soldiers were commanded to surrender from their hideout in Azovstal steelworks. 

Seredniak was among the last captured, and it is there his hellish journey commenced.

Transferred to various facilities, he eventually ended up in the sinister Taganrog facility, where the captives were scrutinised mercilessly and any pretext seized upon for torment.

Plastic ties for torture and a broken chair are seen inside a basement of an office building, where prosecutors say 30 people were held two months during a Russian occupation, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kherson

The guards seemed fixated on sniffing out any hint of pro-Nazi sentiment, with tattoos drawing their gaze. 

Body ink – irrespective of the style – was a ticket to abuse. Those sporting Ukrainian tridents or other symbols deemed nationalist were singled out for yet more extreme punishment.

One Ukrainian prisoner allegedly smashed a small mirror in his quarters and used the jagged edge of glass to slash his throat in an attempt to end his torment – only for fellow inmates to stop the bleeding.  

Russian doctors occasionally graced the detainees with their presence, but offered little solace. Nourishment was scant, with Seredniak claiming to have lost 20kg during his time behind bars. 

Women were treated no differently.

Iryna Stohnii, a battle-hardened 36-year-old senior combat medic, recounted the relentless malnourishment she endured. ‘No food, no sunlight. Just bars and agony,’ she told the BBC.

Stohnii’s nightmare extended to brutal inspections, where women were subjected to cruel stress positions and humiliating strip-downs. 

‘Only devils live and work’ in this grim abyss, she said.

Denys Haiduk, a 29-year-old military surgeon, also explained how inmates were intimidated into confessing to all manner of crimes they hadn’t committed to create false evidence used in show trials. 

Those who refused were further beaten or tortured.

When the surgeon refused to sign an incriminating document upon his release from the Taganrog facility, he was savagely attacked, suffering broken ribs and bruising of the heart muscle from repeated blows to the chest.

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