Ukrainian soldiers recount their daily life in the hell of Russian prisons

Those rare soldiers who were able to return home thanks to exchanges between the two countries testify to endless days, punctuated by violent interrogations and forced labor.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been taken prisoner on the front. Only 1,300 of them have been able to return home through exchanges between the two countries. Torture and humiliation have been the daily lot of the Ukrainian soldiers in the Russian prisons that we met.

First, there is Dmitro, 26 years old. He was captured in Mariupol in May 2022 with several hundred comrades. Very quickly, Dmitro was transferred to a prison in the south of Russia. “In summer it was hot. In winter it was cold. This prison was dilapidated, he describes. Three meals a day, but hey, even children eat more than that… And above all, entire days standing. It was forbidden to sit. From 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Standing… We could only sit during meals, otherwise they would beat you in the morning and in the evening.”

Standing in his cell, doing nothing. “The first week was very hard, Dmitro confides. Afterwards I got used to it. But my legs were really big like that, all swollen. And today I need treatment for varicose veins.” In this Russian prison, violence from the guards is a daily occurrence. “They used batons, tazers, attack dogs. For example, they interrogated me twice a week. They wanted to show that they were working, but in fact they asked you anything. They looked up general knowledge questions on the internet. And if you didn’t answer, they beat you.”Dmitro’s body still bears the scars of this gratuitous violence.

Then there is Sergiy, who tried to flee the besieged city of Mariupol in April 2022. With his unit of around thirty soldiers, they were spotted by a Russian patrol, arrested, violently interrogated and finally taken to prison. “They humiliated us, morally and physically, he relates. Face against the wall, legs and arms apart, blindfolded, and they asked you: what does FAU mean? You answered in Ukrainian Armed Forces of Ukraine, and then they hit you on the back shouting: speak Russian! For each word in Ukrainian, they hit very hard on the kidneys, the testicles, the legs, the back of the neck. Very violently.”

Endless, pointless interrogations for soldiers like Sergui who have no information to reveal. It was absurd, he recalls today. But there is worse than that, like this episode that Sergui struggles to tell us. “One day we were taken back to Mariupol, begins Sergui. We were given shovels and bags to go and exhume the bodies of civilians whose relatives had not been able to bury them properly during the bombings.”

“At one point, they dug up the body of a 5-year-old girl with a big white teddy bear. And that’s etched in my mind for life.”

Sergui, Ukrainian soldier,

to franceinfo

So when we hear these testimonies, we wonder how these men were able to hold out during these long months of detention. The answer is the same for these two former prisoners. Family, coming back alive for one’s family. Sergui thought of his wife, Dmitro of his mother. “Every day I got up and talked. Like a madman. I said: ‘Here, Mom, last night I dreamed about this and that’. I told my mother everything. It made me feel good. And then when I was released, my mother said to me: ‘I was talking to you too’.” Dmitro was released in a prisoner exchange last June after two years in prison. A part of him remained on the other side of the border. “Sometimes at night I get up suddenly and stand at attention. And then I end up calming down,” he says.

As for Sergiy, his captivity ended one evening in January. After a long journey across Russia, blindfolded, with a few comrades they were placed in a small room. And then a soldier with a balaclava came in and said in Ukrainian: “Hi guys, you’re home”Some were crying, others were fighting. “These are immense emotions. It’s like a second birth this night of January 3 to 4.”

According to a United Nations report, 95% of Ukrainian soldiers were tortured while in Russian prisons.