How Russia organized its torture chamber network in Kharkiv Oblast

https://kyivindependent.com ^ | October 22, 2022 2:20 am | Alexander Query

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

VELYKYI BURLUK, Kharkiv Oblast — War veteran Serhii Chepurnyi recently turned 40. This year, he didn't celebrate his birthday.

His hands shaking as he took a cigarette from its pack, Chepurnyi carefully chose his words as he recalled what Russian soldiers did to him when occupying his native village, Velykyi Burluk.

Velykyi Burluk, located roughly 50 kilometers from the Russian border, was swiftly occupied when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The small settlement was officially liberated on Sept. 12. A few days earlier, Chepurnyi was freed from a torture chamber in Vovchansk, located within just a few kilometers of Russia.

Chepurnyi spent 44 days in detainment, subjected to Russian torture, electrocution, and beatings on a daily basis.

"Everything was by the hour, everything was planned," Chepurnyi said of his time in a Russian torture chamber.

His testimony, along with other survivors’ accounts from torture chambers in other parts of Ukraine liberated from Russian soldiers, reveals that the torture of civilians was far from a spontaneous act of certain Russian units: It appears to have been a systematic, organized effort to terrorize local populations.

Serhii Bolvinov, Kharkiv Oblast chief investigator, said on Oct. 6 that his team found 22 Russian sites used to torture Ukrainians in Kharkiv Oblast, including in Vovchansk, Kupiansk, Velykyi Burluk, and Izium.

Belkis Wille, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, led a three-week probe in Izium, where the organization interviewed over 100 victims of war crimes.

"Multiple victims shared credible accounts with us of similar experiences of torture during interrogation in facilities under the control of Russian forces and their subordinates, indicating this treatment was part of a policy and plan," said Wille.

Survivors' testimonies reveal the sheer scale of Russia's highly-organized plans to round up Ukrainian war veterans, volunteers, and civilians in a widespread network of torture chambers scattered across Kharkiv Oblast.

Police station torture chamber

As a Ukrainian war veteran who served when Russia invaded Crimea and Donbas in 2014, Chepurnyi knew he had a target on his back.

He served from 2001 as part of compulsory military service and then in the State Border Guard Service until 2014.

He said that Russian soldiers arrested him while he was doing utility work on a road nearby on July 28. They immediately brought him to Velykyi Burluk's police station, where they made him wait the whole day in a cell without water and access to toilets.

"They took me away at 9 a.m., they didn't give me water or anything," he said. "Then, at 10 p.m., they came to me, put a bag on my head, tied my hands, and took me away."

The Kyiv Independent had access to the Velykyi Burluk police station that Russian forces had taken over during the occupation. The station was heavily damaged during Ukraine's September counteroffensive.

According to Ukraine's open-source intelligence (OSINT) research group Molfar, Velykyi Burluk's police station harbored a battalion of Russia's 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade from the 14th Army Corps, servicemen from the 1st and 2nd Army Corps reserve, and a battalion of the 21st Separate Motor Rifle Brigade.

The station's basement revealed a maze of damp makeshift cells with dirty cloths and empty bottles strewn across the floor, where survivors say they were kept before being transferred to other torture chambers in larger cities – Vovchansk and Kupiansk.

Serhiy, a 37-year-old local emergency service worker who declined to provide his last name in fear of Russia's renewed occupation, told the Kyiv Independent that his brother was among those arrested and transferred to Vovchansk.

"He was brought (to the police station) with a bag on his head, he stayed here for several hours and was taken to Vovchansk," Serhiy said. "Some were released, and nothing happened, no traces (of torture) were left on them, and some were released, and they were in a very bad shape," he added about those detained by the Russians.

The fate of many people kept in the Velykyi Burluk police station remains unknown. "We couldn't even approach (the station), they wouldn't let us," Serhiy said.

He added that it was easy for Russians to round up Ukrainian war veterans because collaborators provided the Russian soldiers with lists.

"You could see that (some) people cooperated with Russians from the way they behaved."

He said that everybody was checked at checkpoints surrounding the city, making it impossible to escape if your name appeared on a list.

"Of course, we know who the collaborators are," he said, adding most of them left with the Russians when Ukraine liberated the village.

"Some stayed there, but the police will find them," he added. "Everything will be fine, people will get their due."

Systematic torture

Russian forces arrested a handful of people, all Ukrainian veterans, in Velykyi Burluk, including Chepurnyi and Serhiy's brothers.

They took them to Vovchansk, three kilometers south of the Russian border.

There, an old factory was turned into a detention center where civilians, including war veterans, were tortured. Serhiy's brother was kept there for 21 days, and Chepurnyi for over a month.

It was visibly painful for Chepurnyi to recall his time in Vovchansk. "The first interrogation took place at night," he said.

Chepurnyi showed the Kyiv Independent his arms on which he said Russians put electric wires to electrocute him. Russian soldiers were wearing masks, he said.

"They tortured me with electricity, a very high voltage, and beat me hard," he said. "The faster they turned (the crank), the higher the voltage," he said.

"It hurt a lot," Chepurnyi recalled. Russian soldiers also poured water on his wounds while electrocuting him to make him talk.

Ukrainian officials have accused Russian forces of using old mobile radio telephones as a power source to electrocute prisoners during interrogations.

The Kyiv Independent spotted a burned Soviet-era radio phone with an apparent wire protruding from its carcass on the floor of one of the first-floor rooms in Velykyi Burluk.

"There was a moment when they said in Russian: "Serhii, your whole life is in your hands. We know where your parents live. Do you understand?" Chepurnyi said.

Little did he know this first day would become his weekly routine for more than a month.

"They had a rotation there about once a week, and also every Sunday, there were similar interrogations, all the same: electric current, beatings," he said.

"When they torture you with electricity, you feel no pain from beatings. You only wish your heart doesn't stop, and that's it," he added.

Chepurnyi was adamant his tormentors were Russians and not from Kremlin proxies in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

"It was the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service)," he said. "Their accents were very Russian."

He said some prisoners surrendered to torture, citing the example of one man who was released after four or five days. He said he thinks this man revealed the position of Ukrainian troops, but Chepurnyi couldn't confirm this information.

Other Ukrainian soldiers confirmed that war veterans had been tortured in Vovchansk, an account also established by locals to Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske, saying "young guys had been tortured with electric shocks for weeks."

One of the medics in Vovchansk, who declined to disclose her name, fearing Russia would renew its offensive, concurred. "They tortured a lot of people," she told the Kyiv Independent, "but we couldn't approach the victims (to help)."

She said that the Russians had brought their own medical teams that were "taking care" of the tortured and that the Russian military had set up their own system to handle their victims.

Chepurnyi said that there were around 40 people in his cell, including three war veterans, civilian women, and the six workers from Sri Lanka held captive by Russian forces for months.

"(Russians) served us food by tossing it where we went to the toilet," he said. "When they got drunk, they would say: "Where are your Armed Forces? We want to destroy them because we are the strong Russian army."

But on Sept. 10, Russians began to flee. They brought the prisoners back into their cells and opened the doors at the last minute.

Chepurnyi, along with other inmates, went to where Russians had kept prisoners’ personal documents, and left on foot from Vovchansk, following the signs to Velykyi Burluk before being picked up on the side of the road leading to their hometown.

'Reeducation' in Kupiansk

Another Russian torture chamber was established in occupied Kupiansk's police station on the city's main street. Russian forces had their main headquarters across the road.

Both sites were largely destroyed by heavy fighting during Ukraine's counteroffensive.

The smell of sweat mixed with human excrement inside the detention site is still strong. Mattresses covered in dry blood are still present on the floors and benches.

A massive Z and simplistic paintings glorifying Russian soldiers surrounded with the communist hammer and sickles were painted on the walls in a long corridor of doors to the cells where inmates were kept.

Russians packed up to 400 people at once in small cells designed for 140 people in total, according to Ukraine's Security Service (SBU). Russian forces put mattresses under low benches, forcing inmates to crawl under them to sleep. Some inmates were forced to stand.

According to Ukraine's Armed Forces that liberated the town, Russians used the police station as a so-called "reeducation" center, forcing prisoners to sing the Russian national anthem daily. The torture chamber had papers taped to the doors with the lyrics.

The uncle of Vladyslav Kaptannyi, a 15-year-old teenager living in Velykyi Burluk, was taken to Kupiansk presumably because he had served in Ukraine's Armed Forces, Kaptannyi told the Kyiv Independent.

"They kidnapped war veterans, took them to Kupiansk, and tortured them there," he said.

The Kyiv Independent couldn't directly contact Kaptannyi's uncle and couldn't independently verify the claim.

Many Kupiansk residents, who refused to give their names to the Kyiv Independent out of fear of Russian soldiers returning, claimed they didn't know what happened in the police station.

Some recalled Ukrainian veterans being brought there but said they didn't know anything about the accusations of torture and mistreatment.

One of the locals, a retiree, admitted to the Kyiv Independent that she was afraid to talk. "We don't know if they will come back, of course, we're afraid," she said.

In Velykyi Burluk, Chepurnyi said there is no place for fear in his heart. He wants to recover, go to work, hug his 18 years-old daughter and rebuild his life.

"This torture was tough to survive," he said. "I tell you, guys, that they are not humans, they have no pity — they are orcs (a term used in Ukraine for Russian soldiers)."

"I don't feel anything now, only hate," he said.

Molfar, a Ukrainian open-source intelligence (OSINT) group, contributed to this report by identifying the Russian units that are the alleged perpetrators of Russia's war crimes in formerly occupied territories.

___________________________________

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

As of Oct. 6, local authorities uncovered 22 torture chambers in the Kharkiv Oblast in the wake of Ukraine's liberation of Russia-occupied territories. Russian forces set up detention centers in almost every city and village where they were based, often using the police station to detain and torture civilians, including Ukrainian veterans. Reports of torture by electric shock, severe beatings, nails being torn off, suffocation with gas masks, and rapes, keep emerging as local authorities investigate Russia's war crimes in the region. (Lisa Kukharska/ The Kyiv Independent)

I traveled to Ukraine's liberated territories in Kharkiv Oblast to document Russia’s methodic cruelty against Ukrainians. Thanks to survivors of Russia's war crime such as Serhyi Cherpunyi and the relatives of those tortured and killed by the Kremlin’s genocidal intent who dare speak out, we can show to the world what Russia does every day to Ukraine. - Alexander Query

[canuck_conservative]

In B4 the usual Russian apologists

Putin is a Nazi thug

[dennisw]

Barbaric Roooskis! This is why we had the Cold War with these drunken idiots, for 40+ years

[ransomnote]

ANy money or weapons given to the Ukraine support the Deep State’s ongoing investment in the Ukraine as their hub of money laundering and biolabs.
The elites intercept all efforts to help the citizens caught in the crossfire so these frantic propaganda pieces are used to gather financial donations and weapons which are handed to Biden, his fellow Deep Staters and the puppet masters in the Ukraine.
There are videos of Ukrainians torturing Russian soldiers - so we can match videos if you like. It’s just that the Deep State wants WWIII and is using the Ukraine to gather weapons and yet more billions to fund it’s efforts at world dominion.
The US has already handed billions to the Deep STate via so-called “Ukrainian aid”. People, those funds never make it to the Ukrainians - people like Brandon and Soros need funds and are using the Ukraine to justify massive appropriation of tax payer funds for their personal use. PS: Soros wants us to be slaves. Supporting the Ukraine is support for those who want to crush freedom and enslave us.

[popdonnelly]

Thanks. He is a thug.

[A strike]

You got that right !

[ganeemead]

Even if your BS story was anything other than BS and even if hohos were being tied in chairs and forced to watch youtube videos of Microperv playing pianos with his Johnson, they’d STILL be better off in a Russian prison than in the hoho army. In a Russian prison, they WOULD be fed and they WOULD NOT be used as pure cannon fodder...

[Chad C. Mulligan]

Yeah, this’ll definitely stir up the Putiphiles.

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

“support the Deep State’s ongoing investment in the Ukraine as their hub of money laundering and biolabs.”

The biolabs have already been dis-proven.
there’s no evidence Ukraine plays a leading role in money laundering.

The Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index is an annual ranking of money laundering and terrorist funding risk on a country-by-country basis. Run by the Swiss-based independent Basel Institute on Governance, the Basel AML Index uses data taken from places such as the World Bank and World Economic Forum.

Ukraine falls in the middle of the rankings with a score of 5.21, whereas Haiti takes the riskiest spot at 8.49 and Andorra takes the safest spot at 2.79. (The U.S. has a score of 4.60.)

Money laundering is a risk across the global financial system, according to Lakshmi Kumar, policy director at Global Financial Integrity.

No country is free of money laundering, Kumar said, and depending on several factors – size of the economy, strength of the judicial system, type of government – the risk of money laundering can rise or fall dramatically.

At the moment, she said, the top-ranked Haiti is “politically chaotic,” which heightens the risk of money laundering. But the size of Haiti’s economy casts doubt on the importance of a country’s index ranking.

For example, the U.S. has a much bigger impact on the global financial system due to the size of its economy, so money laundering in the U.S. “means more,” Kumar said.

Kumar also explained how money laundering between countries also involves a complicated analysis.

“Most of the world’s illicit money leaves the developing world, BUT it finds a place in the developed world,” Kumar said.

“If you isolated and just see this as a problem of Ukraine or Russia, then you ignore the role that US, Europe, the UK, Canada, all play in helping hide this money.”

[UMCRevMom@aol.com]

Please check your info on Russian treatment of POW’s

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

The hammer and sickle on the walls of a torture building in Kupiansk ( spelling in wrong, I know). If true, this is an interesting development.

[Flavious_Maximus]

Shiny ball! Shiny ball! Keep looking over here and ignore the atrocities committed by the Biden regime. /spit

[ganeemead]

Russian Telegram channels reporting:

Ukrenergo said that "The scale of damage as a result of morning strikes by the Russian Armed Forces on Ukrainian energy facilities "is comparable to or may exceed the consequences of the attack on October 10-12."

At the moment, a number of cities in Kiev, Chernihiv, Cherkasy, Zhytomyr, Sumy, Kharkov, Poltava, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Kirovohrad regions have been de-energized."

If true, that has to mean that uktraine is down to no more than 40% and probably more like 20 or 30. We could be seeing some sort of ukie surrender here in days or weeks rather than months

[ganeemead]

Intel Slava Z

🇷🇺🇺🇦❗This morning, attacks were carried out on enemy energy infrastructure facilities in:

▪️Kiev.
▪️ Odessa region.
▪️Khmelnitsky.
▪️Dnepropetrovsk.
▪️Lutsk.
▪️Rivne.
▪️Volyn region.
▪️Kovele.
▪️Lviv.
▪️Nikolaev.
▪️Kirovograd region.
▪️Chernihiv region.

All over Ukraine, the air raid alert is still screaming, further strikes are possible.

[Wilhelm Tell]

It’s interesting how the QAnon conspiracy theories are being used to support Putin and his invasion of Ukraine. On the one hand, the world is seen as very simple, black and white - on the other hand to understand this simple world you have to follow a conspiracy theory with its convoluted wheels within wheels to infinity.

[Chad_the_Impaler]

If the power is already off, how would surrendering help? The Russians can’t instantly restore infrastructure either.

[rrrod]

I see the Putin Puffers failed to get you thrown off FR. LOL

[rrrod]

He is their god and savior...

[rrrod]

Yawn.

[rrrod]

LOL!