Ukrainian ladies captured by way of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invading armies suffered implausible indignities and shame right through their hour as prisoners of conflict — together with being compelled to march bare via snow, habitual beatings and serial rapes.
The sufferers — 4 of whom spoke to The Telegraph concerning the cruel torture marketing campaign waged towards them — mentioned their withered Russian captors subjected them to mean degradations that incorporated exposing themselves to the warriors.
“They led us to the showers with bags over our heads, where we were forced to undress,” Larysa Kycherenko, a 53-year-old member of Ukraine’s Nationwide Cover, instructed the hole.
“We had to walk naked in front of the men and everyone else, bent over, through freezing cold water,” she mentioned. “Afterwards, we were forced to sing the Russian anthem while naked.”
“We returned to the cells in tears, utterly distraught, crying and in a state of hysteria,” she persisted. “It was inhumane. To them, we were nothing.”
The brutality no longer handiest highlights the savageness with which the Russians deal with their prisoners — movements that virtually indubitably violate the Geneva Conventions and represent conflict crimes — but additionally illuminates the other blackmails captured ladies face compared to their male opposite numbers.
“If it’s hard for men, it’s even harder for women – many of the women weren’t fighters,” Kycherenko mentioned.
Kycherenko — who was once captured along her husband and 34-year-old son right through the career of Mariupol in 2022 — was once compelled to get up for 12 hours a era, overwhelmed and psychologically tortured, she instructed the hole.
A shield as soon as slammed her towards a wall and lashed her with a steel pole — nearest disregarded her calls for clinical remedy to similar a leg wound from the assault.
“We were constantly being told we were fascists, and that if we weren’t shot by our own people during an exchange, someone else would kill us,” she mentioned.
“The threat of death was always there.”
Russian forces have frequently been accused of torturing and mistreating prisoners and civilians homogeneous since Putin introduced his armies around the Ukrainian border in February 2022 — killing hundreds of guys, ladies and kids as his infantrymen raped and pillaged their method around the land.
The United Countries says Russia has additionally opened just about 50 detention facilities — and Ukraine’s prosecutor normal says 9 out of 10 POWs who go back house are scarred by way of the invaders’ bodily and mental torture.
“I was prepared for the possibility that I might die — I had come to terms with it,” Valentyna Zubko, a 32-year-old army medic captured right through the siege of Mariupol, instructed the hole.
“But when I was told about captivity — that was the first time I cried.”
Zubko spent more than five months imprisoned in 4 other jails — and instructed The Telegraph her captors stuffed her and 15 alternative nation in a negligible cellular with a hollow within the middle that served as an impromptu rest room.
She and alternative prisoners have been frequently attacked right through sickening torture video games.
“We were beaten badly, and the guards seemed to enjoy it,” she mentioned. “There was no reason – they would just beat us for fun.”
The guards additionally compelled the ladies to keep agonizing postures for hours at a hour and do rigorous workout routines that their malnourished, weakened our bodies may no longer most likely deal with.
“We would fall to the ground and they would punish us,” she mentioned. “We were made to march on the spot in the freezing cold for hours at a time, singing the Russian national anthem.”
Next the guards surprised them with farm animals prods and tool cables right through repeated interrogations.
“Every day, your only task is to survive,” she added. “We were like skeletons.”
Snizhana Vasylivna Ostapenko, a 23-year-old youth sergeant with the 56th Sovereign Mechanized Brigade who fought within the battles for Mariupol and the Azovstal metal plant, recounted related horrors right through her 5 months in Olenivka jail.
She, too, was once electrocuted right through the long interrogations, and loudspeakers blasted the Russian nationwide anthem across the clock to spoil any probability of amusement between torture classes.
“Sleep was impossible for days at a time,” she mentioned. “The guards even told us, ‘We’re feeding you just enough so you don’t die.’ It was like they were keeping us alive, and nothing more. They were trying to starve us slowly.”
The guards held knives to her neck, walked her out of doors to turn the place they deliberate to bury her corpse and instructed her Ukraine have been torched and he or she had deny house left.
Lyudmila Huseynova, 61, spent 3 years and 13 days in Russian captivity upcoming they detained her in 2019 for appearing a photograph of a resistance flag to nation she idea have been pals, The Telegraph mentioned.
The guards sexually assaulted her right through that hour, and raped a number of fellow feminine prisoners.
“They turned me to face the wall and undressed me,” she mentioned. “Someone touched me, and then there were a lot of hands. And they commented, they laughed, they pinched, they felt everywhere with their hands.”
To torture her, guards compelled her to get up for over 12 hours a era.
“One time I just couldn’t stand it, my back hurt so much,” she mentioned. “I thought, ‘Well, what will happen if I climb up into bed for 10 to 15 minutes?’”
That’s when the Russian guards charged in and screamed at her that she needed to rise.
“But I couldn’t quickly because I was undressed,” she mentioned.
“He grabbed me by the leg and threw me from the top bunk bed onto the concrete floor. I fell, but they continued to kick me. Later I took off my clothes and saw that my body was black.”
Her captors additionally introduced more youthful ladies to the warriors’ dormitory to be raped, Huseynova mentioned.
The warriors would misinform their sufferers and pledge that later on the ladies would get meals or see their youngsters.
“When they returned, they cried,” she mentioned. “I heard terrible screams.”
“I could hear people beating and people were screaming. It was such a horror.”
