olenivka, a prison in the occupied territory of ukraine. since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the russians have held thousands of prisoners of war and civilian hostages there. this is a preserved abandoned prison. it was uncanned just before the start of filtration. i think we were one of the first to get there. people with whom journalists for kyiv independent spoke remember this prison with... a roof because of hunger and

brutal treatment by its employees, here he was still running, he was still so short in height, he was still bragging that i was so small, but the blow was so sharp, a belt was wound around my arm and i stood with the belt, there was a room where the boys were taken, where they were tortured for several hours, they beat them by the mat... with tape and very hard. olenivka became the place of mass murder of ukrainian prisoners of war. he shines this flashlight down this road, and i just saw that this way and that until the end of that flashlight, it's just covered with bodies, you know? we collected information step by step about how the prison functioned, its guards, managers and curators. our

the team recorded dozens of interviews with people who returned from captivity and witnessed gross violations of international law. some of our interlocutors will remain anonymous for security reasons. we managed to reproduce the picture of the horrors of olenivka, albeit with some white spots. february 24, 2022. russian troops invaded the territory of ukraine. lands, skies and seas were advancing on mariupol, an industrial city on the shores of the sea of ​​azov. for 86 days , the ukrainian army held the defense of mariupol in conditions that. bombings, 82 of which in full

surroundings military servicewoman maryana mamonova was in charge of the medical service of the marine corps unit. why am i pregnant? i found out in the middle of march, when we were already at the factory, you know, everyone asks me questions, writes comments, how could you not know that you are pregnant. you know, maybe in such civilian conditions you would have learned about it much faster, but we had tasks that had to be performed, we had wounded people, we had to evacuate. i had one pregnancy test, but it showed positive. can you imagine a positive result in

mariupoli, a city that is surrounded, a city that is simply demolished to the ground, and you understand that you will be a mother, for almost a month and a half , maryana mamonova saved wounded soldiers in mariupol, surrounded by russians. even the husband, who was in another region of ukraine, did not know about her pregnancy, at the end of march, i was not sure that i would survive, i wrote him messages and sent emojis, you know, there's mom, dad, there's a girl, mom , dad, a boy, and thought that he, after all, guessed, he guessed, but, as he told me, to accept that opinion that his wife... every day

the situation in mariupol became worse and worse. problems with weapons, food and water began. russia. the troops occupied the city kilometer by kilometer, and when we were moving to one of the combat positions, the car was stopped, and the russian military stopped, who opened the car, aimed the weapon and said that we are military prisoners of the russian federation and the donetsk people's republic, this is the only your chance to save yourself, april 6. in 2022. maryana mamonova as a prisoner of war along with other marines, were taken to olenivka, a prison almost 100 km from the place of their service. at that time, this name did not mean much.

almost four months remained before the tragedy, after which the whole world learned about olenivka. since the 90s, the deer park has functioned as a correctional facility. for men in donetsk region. after the seizure of part of the region in 2014, it came under the control of the pro-russian occupation authorities and was subordinated to the illegally created service of execution of punishments with the center of management in donetsk. occupied for a while the authorities kept convicts there, but later the prison was confiscated. with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russia, olenivka became a camp for prisoners of war and civilian hostages from mariupol. we were brought to olenivka, it was 3 o'clock in the morning or 4 o'clock, one of these russian soldiers said that there was a woman entering the car, they made a decision to take us out first, i

saw how our boys were received, there was a command to run out quickly, when they run out, they are immediately beaten with sticks, from one end. and from the second, russian escorts from with sticks and dogs, they don't look at what to beat, they just beat, beat and beat. april 10-14, 2022. new and new groups of ukrainian prisoners of war were brought to volynivka. the so-called reception lasted several hours, she was escorted. beatings and abuse, they kick you out of the bus, they quickly ask you your last name and middle name, then they drive you into the yard, then they put you in a so-called position on the courts, you sit in a deep squat, you can't stand on your toes, you can't change the position of your legs,

hands should always be behind the head, back straight, head bent, if you ask a question, they beat you, if you lower your hands, they beat you on the hands, lower, try to sit down, beat, respectively, on the back to get you up, and then on your legs, which don't bend, because your legs get hit very hard, really hard, and then you start to get up, fall, get up again and run back in a petticoat, there further to the isolation ward. kostyantyn velychko, an aitivets resident, and yevhen malyarchuk, a businessman from mariupol. in the first days of a full-scale invasion. they took out civilians as volunteers from the blockaded city, both were detained at checkpoints by representatives of the occupation forces and sent to olenivka, like other civilians who did not pass the filtering, a humiliating illegal check at the exit from the occupied territories. regarding the conditions, you should understand that

this is a preserved, abandoned prison, it was de-conserved just before the start of filtering. i think we were one of the first to get there. the first building where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were taken after the so-called reception is dizo, disciplinary isolation cell of the prison. a dilapidated room where the sewage is constantly flowing, the smell is terrible, the floor is concrete, there are no benches, and if there are, they are metal. everything is moldy, moldy, everything is damp and very cold, we were in the isolation cell for two or three weeks, only then we were transferred to the barracks, we rotted there in overcrowded

cells for three weeks, from 21-22 people up to 40-50, when they were jamming, a new stage arrives, they immediately shove you into the cells, you can't sleep, because there's nowhere to lie down, they slept in three shifts. was with us the one on duty who kept track of how much time had passed, woke up those who fell asleep, the rest went to bed, others stood, the radio was constantly playing, the light was always on, it was never turned off. we slept on the floor, on concrete, i was lucky that i took my winter jacket, it was my mattress and pillow and blanket. the average temperature at night in april-may was 5-9°c. there was no heating in the buildings. i fell asleep and said, my god, i probably won't wake up in the morning because i was just freezing. and everyone in the zot was asleep. everyone had what, and you know, huddled together to it was possible to at least somehow warm up,

without exception all the prisoners with whom we spoke also spoke about the fact that there was a critical lack of food and water in olenivka, for the first few days a piece of bread and that much water in a glass, that was all the food. in the future, they already started the dining room, boilers, they started giving something like thin soup, some tea without sugar, well, it’s hard to call it tea, macaroni and even porridge appeared later, we wanted to eat all the time, all that saved us there was bread, there were no problems with the barn there, you start hiding this bread. on you can't eat it all at dinner, because you have to leave it for the evening, and you know, i always

had some stashes of bread, i was always hiding food in my pockets for some reason, i was afraid that i wouldn't have anything to eat, everyone was sick, i fed them we, of course, from one dish, about 200 people in a dizo, and for the whole dizo, probably 20 sets of plates and spoons, are carried around the cells. the water never appeared in the system, it was brought, it was technical, it was so-called potable, it is difficult to call it potable, it was brought in fire engines, it was a mess, we tore t-shirts, did something on sample. to pour over this water and clean it from rust, i just wanted to drink plain

water, to get drunk, just to get drunk, instead of rinsing your mouth and spitting it out, because if you swallow this water, you will have a stomach ache, something else . tetyana eldiab served as a cook in a motorized infantry brigade unit, signed a contract with the ukrainian army a few months before the full-scale war. u polon got into the territory of one of the mariupol metallurgical plants, which the ukrainian military used as shelter. when you enter olenivka, everything changes, there is no life there. dizo, there is a broken tile on the floor, and you feel the same as

that tile, it was morally very difficult, to be without food, without water, without medicine, even without feminine hygiene. during the first three months of the full-scale war, the prison operated. under the banner of the pro-russian occupation authorities. olenivka staff consisted of local collaborators, employees of the prison system. they did not hide their faces, unlike the special forces who were brought in for the so-called reception prisoners of war they are for russia. they said that we do not exist, ukraine does not exist. there are only them, and the future is only theirs. because we were not people for them, i remember these words, you are not people and you are not worthy to

live. the women constantly lived in cells on the second floor of the disciplinary detention center. on the first floor was a room where men were taken for so-called interrogations. i tortured them for several hours, and the girls kept hitting me... with their hands, shouting, you know, stop, stop, you just can't stand the way people shout, to me it was so difficult in those moments, you know, i cried constantly, i could not control myself. not 5 minutes, not 10, but hours, hours of one, two, when at night you hear the sound of scotch opening, you understand that now everyone will cry, girls, they wrapped them with tape and beat them very hard, we did not

sleep then , we could not fall asleep under... this scream, screeching, under all this, we could not and all. three seriously injured defenders of mariupol, who were among the first to be returned from captivity, spoke about the abuse in olenivka at a press conference. i felt it on myself too hit, i was also beaten during the interrogations, they wanted me to sign all kinds of statements against my command there. said that i would not do it, they started beating me with sticks, where i never signed anything, and there were always threats to my life, i see the boys took us away, they were brought from our boys' barrack for two or three days beaten, ribs were broken , well, in a very serious condition, mariupol volunteers

kostyantyn velychko and yevhen malyarchuk also witnessed the torture. this is one. shift, it's kyrylo and yura. this change was the hardest, because people were brought to them, who either committed a crime in prison or needed to get some information. we called it the change of the blade, because nobody called kirill kirill. not everyone even knew what his name was. why was he nicknamed kortyk? because the first days he wore his thighs, here is such a machete. of course, he didn't cut his hands, but he did. waved, even the leadership of the colony had problems with them, here they were, these two guys were engaged in work with prisoners of war, brought them, they beat these people, took someone from the barracks, took them away, someone was interrogated from the second floor, from our cell we could see

the corridor, because there was no second... iron door, there were octopuses, this door with a feeding trough was made of fittings, and there was no second door, of course, when a person was lifted from interrogation, we cannot there was a command to stand up and return to the wall, but once i managed to look from the side, and here were these people who were being interrogated, they were crawling on their knees, and yura and this kort, kirill, were walking behind. team matilda. head of the un human rights monitoring mission in ukraine, interviewed hundreds military personnel from both sides. more than 90% of ukrainian soldiers said that they were tortured or mistreated . most of the torture took place during interrogations. this appears to be the most

organized form of bullying. sometimes people were tortured immediately after being captured. these were usually beatings, generally less organized forms of torture. during the interrogations, in some cases, people were tortured with electric shocks, they were also beaten, sometimes threatened, and also used other forms of physical violence using various objects, sometimes with the help of knives, sometimes they inflicted the circle of tyrants, sometimes they shot, a whole range of tortures. un experts recorded the facts of torture against ukrainian prisoners in olenivka, including the most brutal ones. i can't go into details about this case specifically, what i can say is that some of those who were tortured were electrocuted. we

were looking for any information that would help identify those involved in volena's torture. one of our interlocutors said that he managed to get some internal ones out of the prison documents during the captivity, this person was involved in working with papers in the administrative building. we received these documents and it was thanks to them that we subsequently identified a number of employees of the colony. end of april 2022 . ukrainian troops continued to defend mariupol at the azov stal metallurgical plant. the russian army besieged the plant, the plant itself is a very large

area, it can be said that it is a city within a city, more than 20 km long, the tasks for the defense of the city were determined there. serhii shevchuk moved to mariupol from of the western region on the eve of the invasion. along with several thousand other soldiers held the defense at azovstal. russian troops bombed the plant daily and tried to take its territory by storm. air bombs were used there, starting from a ton, and in my case it was three tons. we miraculously survived there, we ran out of food, there was practically no water, we just drank. technical water, for the last week and a half we did not believe that we would, well, leave alive, but we knew that they would still remember us, everything about us

one thing will be remembered, and we are worthily standing, defending, on patriotism, we wanted to recapture to the last drop, the defense of mariupol was led by the commander of the azov special purpose brigade, denys prokopenko. periodically. he kept in touch with short messages. the enemy broke into the territory of the plant, heavy bloody battles are taking place. i am proud of my soldiers, i thank the whole world for the tremendous support of the mariupol garrison. the situation is extremely difficult, but no matter what, we continue to carry out an order, to hold the defense. may 16 , 2022. on the 82nd day. defense of mariupol, the higher military command of ukraine ordered servicemen to leave the azov steel. more than 2,000 defenders of mariupol

were taken to olenivka as prisoners. most were soldiers of the azov brigade, a unit of the ukrainian army demonized by russian propaganda. with the help of fakes, manipulations and staged videos since 2014, the russian right-wing media created the image of neo-nazis from the military, and later russia under the pretext about... started a full-scale war with nazism, then it turned out that we were on the bus, they were very interested in whether we had servicemen from azov, we had one serviceman there, they took pictures with him, they looked at him like as if this were some kind of person from heaven, but for them it was a call, that was all, then on the video broadcast they talked with their parents, well, it was wild looking at it... in may 2022 , a delegation of representatives of the occupation authorities and propagandists came to the prison to show

satisfactory conditions of detention of ukrainians prisoners of war we import beds, buy detergents, mattresses and bedding, we fully maintain them, they eat three times a day, everything is constantly fresh. despite demonstrative visits by russian-controlled officials, conditions in the prison remained unchanged. the toilets were horrible, although we

got so used to them later that it was almost normal for us, there could be a line of 20-30 people, everything was flooded there, there were no vacuum systems, nothing, we went accordingly according to what happened, but a few days before the arrival of military personnel from azov. further above the flag of the russian-controlled occupation regime changed to the russian tricolor with a stag. almost all supervisors were replaced by russians on business trips. apart from a few people like kiryuschi. and there are a few more people. the rest were already russians. the russian guards were employees of the penal service. and they changed every few weeks. kirill and yuriy's shift remained to work in olenivka. according to the testimony of the military and civilians we interviewed, they continued the abuse in ... on

the orders of the russians, if they needed something to receive, they sent these prisoners to the detention center, where they were interrogated not by the russians, but by the people of the dnr. we knew the names of these two people, we also knew that kirill had a tattoo of a scorpion on his shoulder, and we also had a stack of documents from olenivka. we were not interested in some of these papers. it was about lists of convicts from previous years or regulatory documents. however, in one of the drafts of the report, we drew attention to two names: shokurov kyrylo viktorovych and dmitrienko yury oleksandrovych. we identified the first supervisor quickly. he used social networks with closed access to them under a fake name, but we tracked down several of his photos. this is kyrylo shakurov from occupied horlivka, donetsk region. before the occupation of the city in 2014, he

worked as a supervisor in another ukrainian company. strict regime colony, we also managed to identify other employees who worked in olenivka during the first months of the full-scale war. later we will find out that some of them were also allegedly involved in mockery of the military, but we could not identify kirill shakurov's partner on name yuriy and began to doubt that this was the real name of the second supervisor. he remembers in detail the months spent in captivity, my belly, by the way, appeared in the sixth month, then they started laughing at me, saying that you said you were pregnant, you couldn't see your belly, but you thought that if well, a week or two and you will be changed, well, as if i wanted to deceive someone. months passed, but pregnant maryana was not sent for exchange. in conditions of constant

malnutrition, other women gave her their food, because civilians were recruited to work on the prison grounds, where they could get additional products. apples were brought to me by girls who went to work, and they were given more food there, and they brought them to the cell and shared them with me. there were days when we were brought breakfast at six in the morning, lunch at... evening, and dinner at night, in the cell there was only one topic about food, and who, who knows how to cook what, maryana mamonova and tetyana eldiap are certain for a while they lived in one cell, and then in neighboring ones. one night, tatiana injured her leg. i received an injury due to the fact that one of the girls at night, when they got up to go to the toilet, someone

stepped on, everyone slept on... on the floor, but some were luckier, because there were such wooden pallets, you know, and we slept on the floor, tatyana still doesn't know if she will ever be able to walk fully, my leg is very swollen , but you diverge, diverge, and for six months i walked only on my heels, i could not feel my fingers, my legs... i was constantly in pain and did not heal, but tatyana was not treated, as were other servicemen. volyn residents also kept wounded soldiers captured by the russian army in mariupol, some of them had serious injuries. we had a separate bus with these wounded, you all saw that all of them came out with bandages on

their knees. these are wounded guys, you see, there should be some minimal respect for them. yurik mykertchan, a military medic, is one of the volunteers who agreed to be deployed by helicopter to mariupol, surrounded by the russians. together with his colleagues, he rescued the wounded in an improvised military hospital on the territory of one of the metallurgical plants. later in captivity without special equipment and medicines. we had a boy who there was also a wound in the lower leg. and we, being there just on the concrete, our surgeons were able to visualize the vessel that was bleeding, yes, to tie it up. why does it matter, huh? this manipulation made it possible to save the leg, you see, that is, we, being on the concrete, tried to give everything equally.