Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkov, Ukraine - Sputnik International

'Blood on the Walls':

Inside Ukraine’s Torture Chambers
Ekaterina Blinova

As NATO leaders gathered in Lithuanian capital of Vilnius this week, they debated how much weapons and money to send to Ukraine. Despite some clear points of tension, there was no fundamental disagreement about the basic morality of supporting Ukraine - a government that has regularly weaponized torture against civilians and prisoners of wars over the past nine years.

A report published last month by the United Nations Humans Rights Office found that dozens of civilians were recently tortured "in official pre-trial detention facilities" by Ukrainian security forces. Similar testimony was provided by a Russian law enforcement source, who told Sputnik in May that Ukrainian police had set up torture chambers in Kherson to interrogate local residents over "ties with Russia."

These cases are not isolated incidents. Sputnik has spoken to three survivors of Ukrainian torture chambers – Russian-born Donetsk civilian Alexandra Valko, metalworking specialist Andrey Sokolov, and Larisa Gurina, a former police officer from Kharkov – about their experience in captivity. All three spoke candidly about how Ukrainian forces kidnap civilians suspected of disloyalty and beat, stab, starve, and water board them in hopes of extracting a confession.

Larisa: 'They Tried to Infect Entire Nation With Insanity of Fascism'
Like many in the east of Ukraine, Larisa Gurina, a former police officer from Kharkov, did not accept the illegitimate coup d'etat of February 2014 in Kiev facilitated by neo-Nazi paramilitary groups and their sympathizers. Nor did she accept an openly Russophobic ultra-nationalist ideology and glorification of WW2 Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych by the new Kiev authorities.

"During the Second World War, fascist regimes did not bring such grief, such horror to their own people, as Ukraine did at that moment, in fact, it continues to do now. Therefore, I could not agree with this illegal government, which seized government institutions, which tried to infect the entire people of Ukraine with this insanity. As far as I could manage, I resisted these new so-called authorities. I did not shoot at anyone, did not blow up anything. But what I could do, I tried to do, at least to support those people who resisted this illegal seizure of power and recklessness, this criminality."

Larisa Gurina
former police officer from Kharkov
Having taken power, the interim government in Kiev kicked off what it called an "anti-terrorist operation" (ATO) against the people of Donbass who resisted the illegitimate coup plotters. The harsh crackdown came in response to Crimea's referendum on reunification with Russia on March 16, 2014, and the consequent declarations of independence by Donetsk and Lugansk in April 2014. Larisa gathered humanitarian aid for the destitute people of Donbass who had lost their homes and belongings in the course of the Kiev-led ATO and the accompanied raids and indiscriminate shelling of the region. She was detained by the Ukrainian authorities on March 16, 2015, who groundlessly accused her of treason, undermining the constitutional order, and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
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Larisa remembers well how she was arrested: "They broke into my apartment [in Kharkov] all wearing balaclavas; there were 14 submachine gunners, and five people, including investigators and witnesses. I knew that mass arrests and repressions were taking place in Kharkov. I understood where this would all lead. But, of course, the shock of the first minutes could not be compared with anything else."
The woman was denied a lawyer, and her flat was ransacked. Later, she found out that she had been spied upon by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) for five months. On the eve of her arrest, her son had also been detained. "After that I was taken to the building of the SBU in Kharkov on Sovnarkomovsky Street. My first interrogation lasted 37 hours non-stop," she recalled. "I spent a year [in detention], of which I spent the last two months in the camp, and 10 months in prison. I was taken to the interrogations every day. The interrogations lasted for many hours in a row."
The basement of the SBU building was used as a torture chamber.

"You could scream there as much as you can, no one from above would hear. They sometimes locked me in the shower room. It was a 15 square meter room. The height of the ceilings in this building was high, about 3.5 meters. The walls in this room were covered with tiles. Just imagine: people were beaten so harshly that blood splattered up to the ceiling. They washed the blood off the tiles, but on the ceiling these brown spots – sometimes not quite brown yet – remained."

Larisa Gurina
former police officer from Kharkov
Larisa knows firsthand what happened in this gruesome torture chamber – she was repeatedly tortured there. This torture was cruel and meaningless: she had never been involved in any military resistance, let alone a conspiracy to undermine Ukraine's constitutional order. She had nothing to tell her tormentors.
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"They beat me in the head, they beat me in the stomach and in other ways, in general, this is a very hideous story," Larisa recalled. "I was very scared when they threatened to kill my loved ones: my son, my mother, my granddaughter. My granddaughter is an orphan. They promised to treat them especially cruelly. I publicly, in front of all the investigators, renounced my loved ones. I said that I did not care about their fate, portrayed complete indifference, although this was the biggest fear, the biggest pain."

Still, this torture pales in comparison with the way the Ukrainian Security Service agents forced Larisa to watch her son being beaten almost to death in front of her eyes. The mother underwent unbearable suffering while watching the brutality. Larisa confessed that she nearly died of horror:

"My son was turned into a bag of bones; he was absolutely black [from hematomas]. He had no face; both his arms and several ribs were broken."

Larisa Gurina
former police officer from Kharkov
Alexandra: 'They are Worse Than Fascists'
Alexandra Valko, a Russian-born Donbass resident, also fell prey to Ukraine's torture machine.
Alexandra was born in the Russian city of Inta in the Komi Republic and later moved to the Donbass region. She lived in Pervomayskoye, a village located 74 km from Donetsk, and worked in a Yasinovataya gas technical inspection office. Following the illegitimate coup d'etat in Kiev Valko – like Larisa Gurina – took the side of the people of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and engaged in humanitarian work.
"On May 11, 2014 we held an [independence] referendum," Valko told Sputnik. "I participated in the referendum and worked in the commission." When the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion* and Ukrainian ultranationalist Right Sector** seized Yasinovataya, they kicked off a "cleansing" campaign. Alexandra was among the first they grabbed.

"They were told that I was a [pro-Russian] activist. On January 27, 2015, I was taken prisoner. At 11 o'clock at night, 12 people in balaclavas with machine guns, with Right Sector and Azov stripes broke into my apartment. And they took me away. I was in captivity for 19 days."

Alexandra Valko
Russian-born Donbass resident
Veterans of the Azov volunteer battalion, who took part in the war in Donbass, salute during the mass rally called No surrender in Kiev on March 14, 2020. - Around fifteen thousands participants rallied despite the ban on holding mass events because of the coronavirus, demanding President Zelensky's resignation. (Photo by Sergei SUPINSKY / AFP) - Sputnik International, 1920, 11.05.2022
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Why did they capture her? While working for the gas inspection, Alexandra received various technical information, figures, and calculations which were stored on her smartphone. And it turned out that the Right Sector militants had taken her for a radio operator of a DPR reconnaissance unit. They thought that she had transmitted sensitive data to the breakaway republic. The Ukrainian nationalists opted for torture to make Alexandra tell "the truth."
They put a hat wrapped in tape on her head so that she could not see anything and forcibly pulled her up the stairs. Then they brought her to a room where they started to beat her.

"They beat me very hard, there were three fractures on my face. My nose was broken. They knocked out my teeth. Then they started to poke me with a knife, everything was poked, they wanted to gouge my eyes out. And all the time they told me that I was born in Russia and that I was a Rostov saboteur."

Alexandra Valko
Russian-born Donbass resident
They beat her heavily for seven days in a row. They pulled out her nails and kept her handcuffed for 14 days, making her wrists and fingers fester. Her legs were injured and bled profusely. They didn't feed her, nor did they allow her to go to the bathroom. Alexandra lost 53 kilos while in captivity. She begged her jailers to let her call a lawyer. "Terrorists are not allowed to have a lawyer," she was told.
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"I was transferred from one room to another one, which I called a 'cold store.' It was a small room, all cemented, all tiled. And when I was brought into this room, I saw that there were bullet holes and fresh blood on the walls. I understood that it was a torture room," she recalled. While in this room she was given some canned fish mixed with raw water and sand. The Ukrainian nationalists mocked her: "Let the terrorist eat our Ukrainian borscht!" They forcibly fed her this goo.
As in Larisa's case, the Ukrainian nationalists threatened Valko with inflicting harm on her loved ones. Alexandra remembers that the Right Sector called her daughter and tricked her into coming to the torture chamber by telling her that her mother was seriously ill.

"What they did to her was worse than torture for me," Alexandra recalled. "I was sitting in the room and heard the voice of my daughter behind the wall crying: 'Mommy, mommy, please save me, it hurts so much.'"

While in the Right Sector's captivity, Alexandra saw other prisoners who were hungry and severely beaten, dirty, and awash in blood. They were humiliated and dehumanized by the nationalists.

"These are not people, these are fascists," Valko said about her tormentors. "They need to be rooted out. They did not just take 19 days of my life – I lost 20 years of my life after being tortured, after undergoing all that. There were lots of people like me there. Do not believe Banderites. They are worse than fascists."

Andrey: Almost Two Years in Captivity
Andrey Sokolov, a Russian civilian and a metalworking specialist who went as a volunteer to the Topaz plant in the DPR, was held captive by the SBU from December 2014 to October 2016.

"In December 2014, I traveled from Russia to Ukraine at the invitation of my acquaintances who worked in the Donetsk People's Republic as local authorities. This was at a time when the front did not have a clear line and the republics had just gained their independence."

Andrey Sokolov
metalworking specialist
Andrey owned a metalworking workshop in Moscow and was invited to Donbass so that he could inspect several industrial facilities in Donetsk and the Donetsk region that needed to be restored. These plants and factories were heavily damaged in the course of the Kiev regime's bombing of the region.
"I arrived in Donetsk in my personal car and traveled around the republic in it," Sokolov said. "I ended up with the SBU, after driving into a Ukrainian checkpoint by mistake when I was going from Donetsk to Gorlovka. When checking my documents, they saw my Russian passport. In their eyes, that was enough to detain me." After taking him prisoner, the Ukrainians did not send Andrey to the police or to the SBU, but kept the man at various premises for two weeks without registering his status or charging him with a crime. They made him disappear. Andrey's relatives and friends lost contact with him. Nobody knew about his whereabouts.
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"For two weeks, I was first kept at the location of some Ukrainian military unit, in a basement fenced with makeshift bars," Andrey said. "After that, they transferred me to another military unit and kept me in a shipping container that stood on the street, and, accordingly, there were no windows at all, nothing, the doors were locked, and I didn’t even know whether it was day or night."

He believes that he was later brought to the temporary detention center in Volnovakha, near Mariupol. They kept him there for about a week. Neither an investigator nor law enforcement officers, let alone a lawyer, communicated with Andrey during this period of time. Only after all of these ordeals was he finally brought "like luggage," with a bag on his head, to the SBU's central department in Mariupol. He was interrogated and forced to make a "confession" on video camera.
Andrey Sokolov in Ukrainian captivity (2014-2016) - Sputnik International
Photo of Andrey Sokolov taken with an illegal phone in a cell in the pre-trial detention center in Mariupol. There was a connection there, and he could sometimes call relatives in Russia. Andrey spent almost two years in Ukraine capivity (2014-2016).

"They tell you what to answer and you have to answer it to the video camera, if you make a mistake with something, the camera is turned off and several punches are given to your body so that you understand how to answer correctly," Sokolov recalled.

Having heard that Andrey went to the DPR to help them restore their industrial facilities, the SBU accused the Russian civilian of planning to help the Donbass rebels produce weapons. "The SBU believed that the DPR and LPR republics were terrorist organizations. And, accordingly, everyone who helps them in some way was also a terrorist," he said.
SBU's 'Favorite' Torture Techniques
Unlike Larisa and Alexandra, Andrey was not subjected to severe torture, but he saw how SBU officers tormented other prisoners.

"They used stun guns; they bound a person so that he/she cannot move. One of the ATO’s common interrogation techniques was when they would put an empty bag on a person's head and wrap it with tape so tightly that the person actually suffocates. They would keep it that way for several hours, periodically beating the person. There is also a standard torture practice called 'the wet rag.' This is when a person is placed on the floor of the room, an SBU officer sits on his chest, and another officer puts a rag – an old T-shirt or something else – on the person's face. The officer presses the cloth tightly against the prisoner's face so that when he pours ordinary tap water from a bottle, it causes the rag to stick to the face, making you feel as if you are suffocating under water. That is, it is suffocation torture. It leaves no traces, no bruises, nothing."

Andrey Sokolov
metalworking specialist
An empty bag, a wire tie and a rag which were used by the Ukrainian Security Service for torture by suffocation  - Sputnik International
An empty bag was put on the captives' heads. A wire tie was used instead of handcuffs. A rag was moistened with water and placed on the prisoner's face when he/she was lying on his/her back on the floor. Ukrainian Security Service agents poured water from a bottle on his/her face and the person suffocated. This torture is called a "wet rag".
This suffocation technique was widely used by the Ukrainian SBU because it left no traces, but caused maximum pain to a person, to the point that many subjected to this torture lost consciousness, Andrey recalled. Per him, many Donbass militiamen and ordinary residents who were detained between 2014 and 2016 went through this torture. At the same time, the Ukrainians tried to conceal instances of torture from United Nations officials who occasionally went to the region for inspections, according to Andrey. Sokolov recalled that once, the SBU hid its prisoners and polished their torture chambers until they sparkled ahead of a visit by UN inspectors.
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Escaping Captivity
Larisa Gurina, Alexandra Valko, and Andrey Sokolov were lucky to escape from captivity.
Larisa's friends knew that the SBU leadership was highly corrupt. They gave a massive bribe to a senior SBU official to soften the case. Even though Larisa was allowed to go home shortly after, she was informed that her case was on the prosecutor's desk again. She fled Kharkov without taking any belongings, and later she managed to reach Russia.
When Alexandra Valko's tormentors realized that she was about to die, they decided to get rid of her by taking her to the police. A police officer placed Alexandra under house arrest, which in effect saved her life. She hastened to flee to Donetsk with the assistance of her friends.
Andrey Sokolov made attempts to escape, but was captured by the SBU. He later realized that he had been held by the Ukrainians as an asset for a potential "prisoner swap" with the Donetsk People's Republic. Andrey spent almost two years in Ukrainian captivity before he was finally released.
Spike in Torture in Ukraine
Many of those who have been captured by the SBU or Ukrainian nationalists and military have never returned home. In March 2019, SBU Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Prozorov, who defected to Russia, held a press conference where he told journalists about "The Library," a secret prison and torture site in Mariupol's airport run by the SBU and Azov Battalion.
A general view shows the building of Mariupol International Airport as Russia's military operation in Ukraine continues, in the port city of Mariupol, Donetsk People's Republic. - Sputnik International
A general view shows the building of Mariupol International Airport as Russia's military operation in Ukraine continues, in the port city of Mariupol, Donetsk People's Republic.
According to former prisoners of the Mariupol black site, the corpses of those who died during interrogations were buried in a common grave. Video evidence obtained by Sputnik indicates that the Right Sector sometimes drowned its prisoners in gasoline at abandoned gas stations. One of the stated goals of the Russian military operation was to de-Nazify Ukraine and to bring an end to the Kiev regime's inhuman torture and extermination of Russian-speakers in Ukraine. As the Kremlin has repeatedly stated, the operation will go on until all its objectives are met.
Ukrainian "Right Sector" neo-Nazi movement tortured people in the LPR
Meanwhile, Ukraine has seen a spike in torture by Ukrainian nationalists, the military, and the SBU.

"From 2014 to the beginning of the special military operation [on February 24, 2022] we have exchanged more than 1,300 people. Almost all of them were subjected to torture," Daria Morozova, commissioner for human rights in the Donetsk People's Republic, told Sputnik. "Now we see that this is only getting tougher, unfortunately. Previously, Ukraine was at least silent about it, we could only prove [instances of torture] by inviting various international organizations to work, which talked to them, examined their sites, and published it in their reports. Now Ukraine has no scruples about posting in the media, on the Internet, [videos] in which our soldiers are not only tortured, but are also killed and cruelly tormented."

The spike in the torturing spree is occurring because the West is continuing to turn a blind eye to instances of brazen violations of human rights and the Geneva Convention by the Kiev regime, the human rights watchdog said.

"I believe that this is due to the fact that over the course of nine years, we have repeatedly raised these issues in the Minsk process, and have raised this issue with international human rights activists, but absolutely no sanctions have been applied to Ukraine. And because no sanctions have been applied to Ukraine, this is getting tougher and tougher, as they simply have a feeling of impunity," Morozova concluded.

*Azov Battalion is a terrorist organization banned in Russia.
**The Right Sector is an extremist organization banned in Russia.
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