A Ukrainian widow living within the battle-scarred city of Kherson said she has come to resemble “a living corpse” after having her hands boiled and nails pulled out during hours of torture — and being subjected to a mock execution at her husband’s grave by Russian soldiers.
The story of Oksana Minenko’s torment and survival has emerged as a part of a gut-wrenching expose published by Reuters, revealing gruesome details concerning the alleged treatment of Ukrainians living in Kherson through the city’s nine-month Russian occupation.
Minenko, a 44-year-old accountant whose husband died defending Kherson’s Antonivskyi bridge on the primary day of full-scale war, said she was repeatedly detained and tortured by Russian troops.
During several interrogations within the spring, she claimed that Russians plunged her hands in boiling water, pulled out her fingernails and beat her within the face with rifle butts so badly that she needed cosmetic surgery.
“One pain grew into one other,” said Minenko, speaking at a makeshift humanitarian aid center, with scars visible round her eyes from what she said was an operation to repair the damage. “I used to be a living corpse.”
Minenko believes her tormentors targeted her because her husband had been a soldier. During his burial every week after his death, Russian forces turned up on the cemetery and made Minenko kneel next to his grave, firing their automatic weapons in a mock execution, she said.
Based on Minenko, on three occasions in March and April, men in Russian military uniforms with their faces covered by balaclavas got here to her home at night, interrogated her and took her into detention.
On one occasion, the boys forced her to undress after which beat her while her hands were tied to a chair and her head was covered.
“When you might have a bag in your head and also you’re being beaten, there’s such a vacuum, you can not breathe, you can not do anything, you can not defend yourself,” Minenko said.
Russian troops captured Kherson last March and retreated in November after being unable to carry onto the territory under relentless attacks by Kyiv’s forces.
Greater than a dozen alleged victims claimed to have been beaten, suffocated, had their genitals and ears shocked, deprived of food and water, and jailed in crowded rooms with no sanitation for as much as two months.
“This was done systematically, exhaustingly” to acquire information concerning the Ukrainian military and suspected collaborators or to punish those critical of the occupation, in keeping with Andriy Kovalenko, the Kherson region’s chief war crimes prosecutor.
Those allegations have been backed by Ukrainian law enforcement and international prosecutors assisting Ukraine. But Moscow has consistently denied committing war crimes or targeting civilians during what it calls its “special military operation,” now in its eleventh month.
A 35-year-old Kherson resident named Andriy said that in a five-day detention in August, Russian forces beat him, made him undress and administered electric shocks to his genitals and ears. When the present hits, “it’s like a ball flying into your head and also you pass out,” said the person, who declined to offer his last name for fear of reprisals.
He said his captors interrogated him about Ukraine’s military efforts, including the storage of weapons and explosives, because they suspected him of getting links to the resistance movement.
Ukrainian authorities claimed that a whole lot of the torture in Kherson was going down inside a city office constructing that had been converted right into a sprawling detention facility.
They said greater than 30 persons are known to have been held in only certainly one of the rooms within the warren-like basement that was used for detention and torture through the Russian occupation.
During a December visit to the constructing’s basement, the smell of human excrement filled the air, bricked-up windows blocked the sunshine and lying visible were signs of what Ukrainian authorities say were tools of torture by Russian forces resembling metal pipes, plastic ties and a wire hanging from the ceiling allegedly used to manage electric shocks.
Scratched on the wall were notches, which authorities said were made by detainees possibly to count the variety of days held, in addition to messages. One read: “For Her I Live.”
One other location in town where people were allegedly interrogated and tortured was a police constructing that locals have known as “the opening,” in keeping with Ukrainian authorities and greater than half a dozen Kherson residents interviewed by Reuters.
Liudmyla Shumkova, 47, said she and her 53-year-old sister were held captive at the location for a lot of the greater than 50 days they spent in detention this summer. She said the Russians asked them about her sister’s son because they believed he was involved within the resistance movement.
Shumkova, who works as a lawyer, said about half a dozen people packed right into a cell with only a small window for light and as little food as one meal a day. She recounted hearing male detainees screaming in agony during torture sessions.
“They screamed, it was constant, day-after-day. It could last for 2 or the hours,” she said.
Based on probably the most comprehensive figures up to now on the size of alleged torture and detentions, shared by Ukraine’s top war crimes prosecutor, Yuriy Belousov, the country’s authorities have opened pre-trial investigations involving greater than 1,000 people within the Kherson region who were allegedly abducted and illegally detained by Russian occupiers.
Belousov said authorities have identified 10 sites within the Kherson region utilized by Russian forces for illegal detentions. Around 200 individuals who were allegedly tortured or physically assaulted while held at those sites and about one other 400 people were illegally held there, he said.
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Nationwide, authorities have opened pre-trial investigations into alleged illegal detentions of greater than 13,200 people, Belousov said.
Of greater than 50,000 reports of war crimes which were registered with Ukrainian authorities, Belousov said greater than 7,700 have come from the Kherson region. Greater than 540 civilians remain missing from the region, he added.
Belousov said greater than 70 people had been identified as suspected perpetrators of torture and 30 people had been indicted. Most of them are low-ranking servicemen, he said, but some were senior officers, including colonels and lieutenant colonels.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened an investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
With Post wires
A Ukrainian widow living within the battle-scarred city of Kherson said she has come to resemble “a living corpse” after having her hands boiled and nails pulled out during hours of torture — and being subjected to a mock execution at her husband’s grave by Russian soldiers.
The story of Oksana Minenko’s torment and survival has emerged as a part of a gut-wrenching expose published by Reuters, revealing gruesome details concerning the alleged treatment of Ukrainians living in Kherson through the city’s nine-month Russian occupation.
Minenko, a 44-year-old accountant whose husband died defending Kherson’s Antonivskyi bridge on the primary day of full-scale war, said she was repeatedly detained and tortured by Russian troops.
During several interrogations within the spring, she claimed that Russians plunged her hands in boiling water, pulled out her fingernails and beat her within the face with rifle butts so badly that she needed cosmetic surgery.
“One pain grew into one other,” said Minenko, speaking at a makeshift humanitarian aid center, with scars visible round her eyes from what she said was an operation to repair the damage. “I used to be a living corpse.”
Minenko believes her tormentors targeted her because her husband had been a soldier. During his burial every week after his death, Russian forces turned up on the cemetery and made Minenko kneel next to his grave, firing their automatic weapons in a mock execution, she said.
Based on Minenko, on three occasions in March and April, men in Russian military uniforms with their faces covered by balaclavas got here to her home at night, interrogated her and took her into detention.
On one occasion, the boys forced her to undress after which beat her while her hands were tied to a chair and her head was covered.
“When you might have a bag in your head and also you’re being beaten, there’s such a vacuum, you can not breathe, you can not do anything, you can not defend yourself,” Minenko said.
Russian troops captured Kherson last March and retreated in November after being unable to carry onto the territory under relentless attacks by Kyiv’s forces.
Greater than a dozen alleged victims claimed to have been beaten, suffocated, had their genitals and ears shocked, deprived of food and water, and jailed in crowded rooms with no sanitation for as much as two months.
“This was done systematically, exhaustingly” to acquire information concerning the Ukrainian military and suspected collaborators or to punish those critical of the occupation, in keeping with Andriy Kovalenko, the Kherson region’s chief war crimes prosecutor.
Those allegations have been backed by Ukrainian law enforcement and international prosecutors assisting Ukraine. But Moscow has consistently denied committing war crimes or targeting civilians during what it calls its “special military operation,” now in its eleventh month.
A 35-year-old Kherson resident named Andriy said that in a five-day detention in August, Russian forces beat him, made him undress and administered electric shocks to his genitals and ears. When the present hits, “it’s like a ball flying into your head and also you pass out,” said the person, who declined to offer his last name for fear of reprisals.
He said his captors interrogated him about Ukraine’s military efforts, including the storage of weapons and explosives, because they suspected him of getting links to the resistance movement.
Ukrainian authorities claimed that a whole lot of the torture in Kherson was going down inside a city office constructing that had been converted right into a sprawling detention facility.
They said greater than 30 persons are known to have been held in only certainly one of the rooms within the warren-like basement that was used for detention and torture through the Russian occupation.
During a December visit to the constructing’s basement, the smell of human excrement filled the air, bricked-up windows blocked the sunshine and lying visible were signs of what Ukrainian authorities say were tools of torture by Russian forces resembling metal pipes, plastic ties and a wire hanging from the ceiling allegedly used to manage electric shocks.
Scratched on the wall were notches, which authorities said were made by detainees possibly to count the variety of days held, in addition to messages. One read: “For Her I Live.”
One other location in town where people were allegedly interrogated and tortured was a police constructing that locals have known as “the opening,” in keeping with Ukrainian authorities and greater than half a dozen Kherson residents interviewed by Reuters.
Liudmyla Shumkova, 47, said she and her 53-year-old sister were held captive at the location for a lot of the greater than 50 days they spent in detention this summer. She said the Russians asked them about her sister’s son because they believed he was involved within the resistance movement.
Shumkova, who works as a lawyer, said about half a dozen people packed right into a cell with only a small window for light and as little food as one meal a day. She recounted hearing male detainees screaming in agony during torture sessions.
“They screamed, it was constant, day-after-day. It could last for 2 or the hours,” she said.
Based on probably the most comprehensive figures up to now on the size of alleged torture and detentions, shared by Ukraine’s top war crimes prosecutor, Yuriy Belousov, the country’s authorities have opened pre-trial investigations involving greater than 1,000 people within the Kherson region who were allegedly abducted and illegally detained by Russian occupiers.
Belousov said authorities have identified 10 sites within the Kherson region utilized by Russian forces for illegal detentions. Around 200 individuals who were allegedly tortured or physically assaulted while held at those sites and about one other 400 people were illegally held there, he said.
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Nationwide, authorities have opened pre-trial investigations into alleged illegal detentions of greater than 13,200 people, Belousov said.
Of greater than 50,000 reports of war crimes which were registered with Ukrainian authorities, Belousov said greater than 7,700 have come from the Kherson region. Greater than 540 civilians remain missing from the region, he added.
Belousov said greater than 70 people had been identified as suspected perpetrators of torture and 30 people had been indicted. Most of them are low-ranking servicemen, he said, but some were senior officers, including colonels and lieutenant colonels.
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has opened an investigation into alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
With Post wires
