These volunteers who left to deliver humanitarian aid to Mariupol recount the treatment inflicted by Russian soldiers and separatists between March and July 2022.
They now live in safety, with their families, in a country neighboring their native Ukraine. But Roman and Oleksandr are no longer the same men. “I think I took ten years”, says Roman, 39, his teeth, liver and kidneys still damaged. For Oleksandr*, barely 25 years old, “anxiety does not go away”. Certain noises, like those of fireworks, still startle him. Leaving from Zaporizhia to deliver humanitarian aid to Mariupol at the end of March 2022, Roman and Oleksandr were arrested, beaten and held prisoner for more than three months by Russian and separatist forces.
They suffered what the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) defines as war crimes. “The illegal detention, the torture, the inhuman conditions of detention and the total lack of defence”, enumerates Yuliia Poliekhina, member of the Ukrainian human rights organization SICH. The lawyer, who investigates war crimes and collected the testimonies of Roman and Oleksandr, specifies that they are part of a group of 33 Ukrainian volunteers arrested at the same time, near Mariupol, and transferred to Olenivka prison in the Donetsk region. Information confirmed by Natalia Okhotnikova, researcher for the Zmina human rights center, who also investigated these violations.
Locked up in a cellar, refrigerated
When the Russian invasion plunges the whole of Ukraine into war, on February 24, 2022, Roman lives in Dnipro and Oleksandr in Mariupol, by the Sea of Azov. Their paths cross in Zaporijjia, a month after the start of the offensive. Roman has volunteered to bring humanitarian aid to Mariupol, while Oleksandr, passing through Zaporizhjia to drop off his wife and child, tries to return to his besieged port. The two men are in contact with the same association, which offers them to each drive a bus full of parcels to the martyred city. They leave Zaporizhia on March 25.
“In peacetime, it takes four hours between Zaporizhia and Mariupol”, says Roman. When the fighting rages, the road of 230 kilometers seem to stretch. As they approach the occupied city of Tokmak, the checks multiply, until the one that puts an end to their journey, after a hundred kilometers. “Some Russians didn’t like that we had a lot of medicine and food with us”says Roman. “‘Everything you bring is for the military’, we were told”, continues Oleksandr. According to the Ukrainian, it was written “We will win” on some jars of food carried on their buses. Drivers are arrested.
Roman and Oleksandr spend a first night in a house “dilapidated”, where they sleep on a wooden floor, then the next in a cave on the road leading to Tokmak. “In this cellar, there was nothing but earth. We would go to the toilet under surveillance, then we would be locked up again,” describes Roman.
“It was 7 or 8 degrees in the cellar. We were so cold that we didn’t sleep at all.”
The next morning, a soldier announces to them: “Now you will warm up.” The two volunteers are led near a field. their guard hands them two shovels: “You will dig your own graves.” He points not far from there to what he presents as the fallen down “of volunteers bringing aid to a Ukrainian battalion”. “I was thinking of my wife, my child and my mother, recalls Oleksandr, confiding in his “despair”. What would become of them if I was gone?”I was shocked”, continues Roman modestly. Finally, the soldiers decide to bring them to Tokmak, to a command post of the Russian forces, according to their accounts.
Blows “where it hurts”
Arriving in this building, Oleksandr cherishes the hope that “it’s finally over”. Inside, men “Chechens”, according to the two volunteers, order them to face the wall before putting a bag on their head. “Roman asked questions and they started beating him,” says his fellow driver. Twice, according to their respective testimonies, the volunteers were struck in the liver, kidneys and knees. “Where it hurts”, Roman breath.
“I was in a lot of pain. I was covered in bruises, I couldn’t walk, sit or lie down.”
The two Ukrainians are separated and placed in cells “very dirty” And “without light”. Roman describes an interrogation, at nightfall, “with visible instruments of torture to cause fear”, and when “they searched [s]we call, look at everyone [s]my contacts”. “They kept asking me to tell the truth.” That same night, Oleksandr reported being beaten again, twice, in the head and legs.
The drivers, very experienced during these first days of detention, are released and resume the road to Mariupol. The joy of finally find [leur] freedom” stops at the entrance of the besieged city, during a new inspection. “When we said that we had already been checked, we received a blow from the butt of a rifle in the chest”, testifies Roman. “We thought”, wrongly, “that everything would be over after Tokmak”.
Roman and Oleksandr say they were forcibly moved to the nearby town of Nikolske and then taken to the “organized crime department” of the self-declared republic of Donetsk. Their testimonies join those of other volunteers arrested at the same time, according to Zmina and SICH. “Nobody heard from them, and for long periods of time. They had no access to any lawyers, so they could not understand the reasons for their detention either, point Natalia Okhotnikova. They were interrogated numerous times, and some said they were forced to sign blank documents. No one knows what will be written on these sheets next.”
In the sinister Olenivka prison
Between Nikolske and Donetsk, Roman and Oleksandr testify to new interrogations, including four hours in the middle of the night for Roman, threats of conviction for “terrorism” and new beatings. Roman ended up with several volunteers in a cell “without light, locked up for twenty-four hours”. A situation “impossible”even if “compared to Olenivka was better.” On April 4, according to the testimonies of Roman and Oleksandr, the group of volunteers is once again moved, this time to this prison with a sordid reputation.
A document from the separatist “republic” of Donetsk, consulted by franceinfo, confirms the detention of the two volunteer drivers untilto July 4: 92 days in inhuman conditions, according to their testimonies and those of other detainees. These conditions, “volunteers describe them all the same way”, emphasizes Yuliia Poliekhina, who questioned 12 of the 33 Ukrainians concerned. The lawyer relates stories of a “old prison where no work is ever done, with mold on the walls and pipes that don’t work”. Dbuildings without heating, the “abominable smell”, a total absence of medical aid, meals “indigestible” and “people taking turns sleeping on the floor”.
As soon as they arrive, Roman and Oleksandr are placed in a cell of about 18 m2, with 45 other people, according to them. “It was scary, some of the people stayed up and the other had to curl up to sleep” on the ground, lack of space, says Roman. As for hygiene, “we haven’t seen soap once” the first month. Passages to the toilets were at the whim of the guards and the plates that were served to them “were never washed”.
“We were given a kind of porridge with a very small piece of bread. They sometimes gave five liters of water for twenty-four hours for all the prisoners in our cell, and the water was not drinkable. I much thinner.”
Those who were detained described to Yuliia Poliekhina the “same dental problems” And “many digestive disorders”. “They almost all left Olenivka with gastritis”, emphasizes the lawyer.
Over the course of their detention, the conditions improve slightly for volunteers. Roman is placed in a new, more spacious building, and in exchange, works to renovate the premises. Here at least “we couldn’t sleep on the floor”. “The mattresses were in terrible shape, but they were mattresses nonetheless.” Volunteers receive packages from their relatives, are allowed to go out into the prison yard. But time passes: a second, then a third month. “We said to ourselves that all of this was illegal and that it would end one day. We had to resist”, testifies Roman. The length of detention affects the mind of the detainee. “What can be your state when you understand that nothing depends on you?” he points. At the beginning of the summer, Roman affirms to find the cell of the beginnings, a “nightmare” worse from sweltering heat.
“I felt like I would stay forever. And seeing how they treated people really shocked me to the core.”
One morning in July, guards come looking for Roman and Oleksandr. Three weeks earlier, the “department for combating organized crime” of the self-proclaimed republic of Donetsk declared their innocence, according to a document consulted by franceinfo. “These people are not soldiers, they do not represent the armed forces or militarized organizations”, recognizes the department, ordering “not to pursue the investigation” against them and “free them”.
“According to the testimonies of the volunteers, 32 of them were released together at the beginning of July”, confirms Natalia Okhotnikova. Roman and Oleksandr leave Olenivka on July 4, free for the first time in more than three months. “It was unexpected, loose Roman. I felt like I was born a second time.”
*The first name has been changed at the request of the person concerned, to ensure the safety of his loved ones.