During the first three months of the war in Ukraine, Serhii Provilov remained cloistered in the cellar of his house in Izium. The sky was on fire. Over the city, it was raining bombs. “For three months, I didn’t dare go more than ten meters from the cellar,” says the 60-year-old man.
Russian forces took control of Izium and the skies calmed down a bit as the front moved west. At the beginning of summer, Serhii Provilov came out of his cellar. He thought he could take a breather.
But what awaited him was worse than the cellar. Worse than the bombings. Worse than anything he had ever experienced.
The streets of Izium were swarming with Russian soldiers, who had made the city their logistical base. “They were checking our papers for Ukrainian soldiers. They were also constantly looking for opportunities to plunder. »
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Serhii Provilov
On August 5, in the evening, Russian soldiers parked their armored truck in front of the gate of Serhii Provilov’s garden. They ordered him to tie up his dog, otherwise he would be shot. Two soldiers dragged him to the backyard, while the others ransacked his house. “In the courtyard, the soldiers beat me while asking me: where are your comrades? Where’s the ammo? »
A soldier pointed a rifle at his forehead. “I’m counting to three,” he threatened. If you don’t tell us where the guns are, I’ll kill you. He counted to three, but didn’t shoot. He gave him a violent machine gun blow in the back, breaking his ribs, and dragged him to the tank.
The soldiers then showed up at the apartment of Yuri Slauta, 53. “It was around 11 p.m.,” says the latter. They asked me for my papers and politely asked me to follow them because they had things to check. I had nothing to reproach myself for, so I went down with them. »
On board the truck, I saw Serhii, my cousin, badly battered. I started to be afraid.
Yuri Slauta, 53 years old
The soldiers took the two men to the Izium police station, converted by the Russian occupiers into a sordid detention center – torture chamber included.
There is not much left of the old police station, partly destroyed by the bombardments, then ransacked by the Russian soldiers forced to beat a retreat. Through the debris strewn on the ground, we understand that the occupier had made it his headquarters.
In the basement, damp cells, plunged into darkness, give the shivers. In one corner, a metal bucket as a toilet. On a wall, an inmate counted the days.
In the old shooting range, where the prisoners were tortured, there are still gas masks that were put on the prisoners before blocking the oxygen inlet. In the center of the room, a rusty chain hangs in the air.
Five months later, Yuri Slauta does not remember everything. The most terrible moments, his memory blocked them. But he remembers the smell. Fetid.
They locked us in a cell, without light, without air. The smell was unbearable. We tore a pillowcase to cover our faces.
Yuri Slauta, 53 years old
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Residents of Izioum were locked up in this jail during the occupation.
The cell was plunged into total darkness. Deep in his pocket, Yuri Slauta found a lighter. He turned it on to scan the room around him. The floor was covered in shit.
The next morning, the jailers came for Yuri Slauta. They put a balaclava on his head and took him to the shooting range. There they tied him to the chain hanging in the middle of the room. “They hit my kidneys, they broke my ribs. »
The torture session lasted an hour and a half. “I still haven’t understood the purpose of this interrogation,” he confides five months later. They just beat me to beat me. »
His ordeal lasted seven days.
All the while, my wife was scouring the town looking for me. There was no trace of me anywhere.
Yuri Slauta, 53 years old
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Yuri Slauta and Serhii Provilov
Yuri Slauta was transferred to the second basement, to an even more gloomy cell than the first. In the darkness of his jail, the days merged with the nights. “There was no bed, no soap, no toilet paper. His dungeon killed him even more than the torture sessions.
After a week, Yuri Slauta lost his mind.
In the first basement, Serhii Provilov was treated only slightly better. “A guard warned me that my cousin had lost his mind and was about to die. That day, the soldiers transferred Yuri Slauta to the hospital. His body was covered with bruises. His head was elsewhere. But his nightmare was over.
It took him a long time to come to his senses. “The first few months, I didn’t move or sleep. I just sat there doing nothing. »
***
Over the past year, this horror story has repeated itself hundreds, thousands of times in the occupied towns and villages of Ukraine. And there is no reason to believe that it is not repeating itself today.
In Izium alone, nine torture chambers were discovered after Russian forces withdrew in September.
So far, the Ukrainian authorities have collected the testimonies of a hundred citizens tortured in one or other of these places, according to the chief prosecutor of the Kharkiv region, Oleksandr Filchakov.
There were probably many more; a large part of the inhabitants fled the devastated city, which considerably complicates the investigations.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
The chief of investigations of the Izium police, Timyr Tertischnii, guides us in the old police headquarters, converted into a sordid detention center by the Russian occupiers.
Numerous torture chambers have also been discovered in Kherson, in southern Ukraine. “The scale of the phenomenon is horrific,” Dmytro Loubynets, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights officer, said in November. “I am sure that in every major locality, we will discover a torture chamber, because it is a system put in place by Russia. »
Torture in all its forms, in an armed conflict, constitutes a war crime, according to the Geneva Convention. And the Ukrainian authorities are determined not to let this crime go unpunished.
“In the nine torture chambers of Izium, the soldiers left traces,” says Colonel Oksana Oliinyk, of the Kharkiv regional police. We found notebooks, names, clothes. We took samples to establish genetic profiles. »
One day, she hopes, the executioners of Izioum will pay for what they have done.
The Russian soldiers landed in the middle of the night, on August 12, at the home of Vitaly Nechadyn and his father, Oleksandr. “Everyone was sleeping. They pointed a gun at my grandmother and threw us like dogs into their Ural truck. We were still in our underwear. »
The father and son were locked up in the old Izioum police station.
Their executioners beat them with metal bars. With boxing gloves, too. Oleksandr, 50, left his teeth there.
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Oleksandr Nechadyn and his son, Vitaly
Her 22-year-old son Vitaly was repeatedly subjected to a cruel lie detector: powerful electric shocks. “Once, my heart almost gave out. They gave me a pill…”
PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS
Another torture chamber had been established in this devastated school of Izium.
For a month, the two men suffered the worst abuse. They ate almost nothing, drank nothing: every day, half a ladleful of clear broth and a single bottle of water, which they had to share with five other prisoners.
They were detained until the end. Until the liberation of Izioum. “We stopped seeing soldiers from September 8. They had left us without water and without food. On September 10, a Ukrainian guard came to free everyone. He told us: “Run as fast as you can, they will blow up the bridge, there will be shelling everywhere!” »
After a month of torture, a month without seeing the light of day, Vitaly and Oleksandr Nechadyn had no time to enjoy the fresh air or their newfound freedom. They ran and ran, to save their skins.