Mick Hartley

A timely report from the Telegraph on the treatment by the Russians of captured Ukrainian women:

Ukrainian women taken as prisoners of war are being tortured and humiliated by Russian soldiers in a systematic campaign of abuse, survivors have revealed.

Some have been subjected to cruel degradations, including being forced to march naked in the snow and expose themselves to their captors.

The Telegraph tracked down four women who agreed to speak out about the months and, in some cases, years they spent in captivity.

Their testimonies reveal the brutality with which Moscow’s forces treat the Ukrainians they have captured, providing evidence of what are almost certainly war crimes.

“They led us to the showers with bags over our heads, where we were forced to undress. We had to walk naked in front of the men and everyone else, bent over, through freezing cold water,” said Larysa Kycherenko, 53, who served in Ukraine’s National Guard.

“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… It was inhumane. To them, we were nothing.”…

During her ordeal, Ms Kycherenko was forced to stand for over 12 hours a day, beaten, and psychologically tortured – in an apparent violation of the Geneva Conventions.

She described being “slammed” against the wall by a guard and beaten with a metal pole, and then being denied medical treatment for the open wound it left on her leg.

“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. The threat of death was always there.”

Since Russia launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine, it has been repeatedly accused of mistreating prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians.

At least 48 detention centres have been identified by the United Nations, while Ukraine’s Prosecutor General reported that at least nine out of ten POWs returned to the country suffered physical and psychological torture….

Every day the women were forced into stress positions – another form of torture where prisoners are forced to hold agonising postures – for hours at a time, and made to do near-impossible exercise routines supervised by guards who would beat them if they failed to keep up.

“We would fall to the ground and they would punish us […] We were made to march on the spot in the freezing cold for hours at a time, singing the Russian national anthem,” she said. “Every day your only task is to survive.”

Ms Zubko and her fellow prisoners were fed porridge mixed with water, which she said was barely enough to survive. “We were like skeletons,” she said.

Ms Zubko and several women The Telegraph spoke to reported being given electric shocks by cattle prods and power cables during the repeated interrogations….

And so on.

But, you know, Putin must be appeased. Zelensky is the dictator. 

Younger girls would be taken to a dormitory where Russian soldiers stayed.

“When they returned, they cried,” said Ms Huseynova. Other women were often raped by soldiers who promised they would get food or see their children again, she said.

“I heard terrible screams. I could hear people beating and people were screaming. It was such a horror. In my life, even when I was already beaten, it was not as horrible as listening to this.”

Almost three years later, Ms Kycherenko has still not been reunited with her husband or son, who are still in captivity. She is kept awake at night by the thought of them suffering in the same way she did.

“I want to tell them that I love them. I was trapped for seven months, but to think of them there, three years later, is unbearable.”