The UN sounds the alarm. Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians are held in overcrowded, unsanitary prisons on occupied Ukrainian territories, as well as in Belarus and Russia, Alice Edwards, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, reveals in an article for The New York Times. 

Most Ukrainian prisoners are isolated from the outside world and subjected to systematic torture, starvation, and psychological abuse. 

“Investigating and prosecuting torture is a legal obligation, not a diplomatic nicety or something that can be negotiated or leveraged during negotiations,” Edwards stresses.

Russia legalizes torture as a military tactic

Edwards concluded that only one party in the conflict employs torture as a state policy — Russia.

“ …Widespread nature of witness accounts while in Russian custody — along with Moscow’s failure to address the issue — have led me to the conclusion that it can only be a systemic, state-endorsed practice approved at the highest levels,” she says.

Torture methods are shockingly brutal: sexual violence, electric shocks, suffocation, sleep deprivation, mock executions.

“Malnourishment is routine, and individuals have reported being hung upside down and held in stress positions for long periods, sometimes beaten during it,” Edwards noted.

Victims’ testimonies: “Threatened with castration and rape”

For example, Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Kharlats, captured early in the war, described six or seven torture sessions with electric shocks, forced to keep his arms along his body to intensify pain, and beaten with batons and rifle butts when convulsing.

Another prisoner, Anatoliy Tutov, endured four interrogations with beatings and sexual torture, including a threat to cut off his penis and rape him. Upon release, doctors documented internal bruises, two broken ribs, and cracked bones.

Another prisoner, a woman from occupied Kherson, was abducted on her way to work, raped, and electrocuted on her first day in captivity. She has been transferred between prisons and is now held in a Russian facility.

Kyiv has found the murderer of Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who was tortured to death in Russian captivity. Ukraine has charged Alexander Shtuda, the head of Detention Center No. 2 in the Russian city of Taganrog, with organizing the torture of the journalist, the Prosecutor General’s Office reports.

According to the investigation, a targeted system of repression operates in the Taganrog detention center against Ukrainian citizens held there, including civilians.

“Among its victims is well-known Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna. She was detained by Russian forces in temporarily occupied Zaporizhzhia Oblast and transferred to this detention center,” the report says.

Torture of the journalist confirmed: forensic evidence proves physical abuse

Yurii Belousov, Head of the Ukrainian Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict, says that an expert examination revealed “numerous bodily injuries” on Roshchyna’s body, confirming the use of torture and cruel treatment.

According to him, Shtuda deliberately organized this abuse because Roshchyna refused to cooperate with the prison administration.

Roshchyna was pushed to the brink

In the Taganrog detention center, Roshchyna was subjected to systematic torture, beatings, humiliation, threats, and severe restrictions on access to medical aid, drinking water, and food.

The examination, conducted on 9 July by the Main Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of the Ministry of Health, revealed that Roshchyna suffered neck trauma, bone fractures, hemorrhages in soft tissues of the temporal area, right shoulder, and shins, and abrasions on her left foot.

“As a result of this treatment, Roshchyna’s health seriously deteriorated. She lost weight and became unable to walk on her own,” Belousov says.

Moreover, he added that Shtuda tried to conceal the fact that Roshchyna was being held in the facility, ignoring requests and inspections.

Torture as a system: Other Ukrainians confirm abuse in Taganrog

Earlier, Ukrainian citizen Ostap Shved, who was detained in Taganrog after the strike on the Olenivka prison, described similar torture.

His testimony matches what Roshchyna endured — a systematic mechanism of physical and psychological destruction of Ukrainians operates in the facility.

Shved, who survived the Russian strike on the Olenivka prison where Azov fighters from Mariupol’s Azovstal were held, recounted that he and other prisoners were beaten by mobs of Russians, hanged, and electrocuted. One guard sliced his ear with a blunt knife.