Horrific acts of torture have been reported from prisoner of war camps in Russia where captured Ukrainian soldiers are fed dog food and suffer sickening cruelty.
Pictures from inside Russian jails have revealed the stomach-churning conditions while those lucky enough to make it out of the prisons alive are recalling their grim experiences. Soldier Oleksandr ‘Sasha' Hrytsiuk, died in Russian captivity, allegedly due to tuberculosis. His wife Oksana has since said a cellmate of Oleksandr's revealed the brutal realities inside the Vyazemskoye Detention Center-2.
His body was only recognisable by a tattoo and it left Oksana "shocked" by how emaciated her husband was after being in the prison. He is said to have had "signs of torture" all over his body.
Oksana said: “When we arrived in Kyiv for body identification on January 25, I was shocked by what I saw. It was a very horrifying sight. What struck me the most was how emaciated the body was. The pathologist said that he weighed less than 50 kilograms. Sasha was tall — 180 cm.
"Before captivity, he weighed 110 kg and was physically healthy. What was left of him were just bones and skin. His head was all bruised, his nose was crooked, and his index fingers had no nails. Whether they were ripped out or smashed, I do not know. There were signs of torture all over his body."
Oleksandr's beatings were revealed by a cellmate who says they were beaten "every day". Oksana added: "They were beaten either in the cell or taken outside. They beat them very brutally, especially my husband. He was beaten very cruelly, to the point of losing consciousness.
"Once, there was some holiday, and dogs were running in the prison yard, so the guards collected leftover dog food, added dog hair to it, and gave it to them as food." Fellow inmate Oleksiy Kretsu revealed he had witnessed the torture of two prisoners whose genitals were stunned.
"There were women in their bathhouse. And they loved to beat us in the genitals with boots, stun guns, anything. They also beat us during interrogations. I'm just a simple border guard, not an assault trooper, not a marine, not a machine gunner. And even then, I lost half of my teeth during these interrogations. And what they did to the machine gunners or snipers during interrogations — it's terrifying to imagine."