Ukrainian civilians reveal horrors of Russian torture chamber.

Blindfolded, arms and legs bound, and lying in the corner of the torture room, Dima could only hear his fellow prisoner scream and his ribs crack, as the man was beaten to death next to him.

The soldiers had grunted with exertion as they bound the prisoner – Kolya – into the “lastochka” or “swallow” position, an infamous torture method long favoured by Russian forces.

They then got to work as they always did in this makeshift cell below the railway station in Trostyanets, a northeastern Ukrainian town near the border with Russia.

 
Dima remembers how Kolya, who had apparently denounced Moscow publicly, was subjected to particularly savage violence. Even after Kolya was dragged to the blood-stained room, he refused to stop cursing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, fuelling the relentless blows that rained down on him.

It was only when he went quiet that the boots crunched out of the cell. Then Dima heard a gurgle edge Kolya’s breath.

“I screamed at the guards: ‘He is dying, he is dying.’ I tried with my bound feet to push a bottle of water towards him,” says Dima, visibly distressed.

“All they did was laugh and say: ‘If he dies, he dies. All Ukrainians must die.’ I kept calling to Kolya but he didn’t reply,” the part-time mechanic adds.

Trapped in a purgatory of darkness that erased time, Dima thinks Kolya was murdered on the second or third day of his captivity – but he cannot say for sure. “They kept the body next to me until the morning when they removed it and brought in two more people,” he adds.

For 10 days, survivors of this room – all civilians – say they were starved, tortured, subjected to multiple mock executions, threatened with rape and forced to sit in their own excrement by soldiers under Trostyanets station.

This is just part of a slew of new testimonies obtained by The Independent that provide fresh evidence of possible war crimes in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy.

The Independent spoke to two of the survivors: Dima, the first to be held captive, and Andrei, who says he was abducted by soldiers a few days later.

Dima says Kolya was prisoner number four of at least eight civilians held there during the month-long Russian occupation of the town.

He shows us the site, located in a basement under the main ticket hall of the station. It was just a few metres wide, and still smeared in blood.

Three of the detainees are dead or missing: Koyla was killed, and two others, including a military veteran, were beaten almost unconscious before they were taken away. Their whereabouts are still unknown.

Andrei – prisoner number six – says he was stabbed in his left leg, stripped, and threatened with genital mutilation and rape.
 
 
 
Bound, beaten, killed: Ukrainian civilians reveal horrors of Russian torture chamber
Special report: One prisoner recalls how a man was beaten to death next to him. Another recounts being stripped, stabbed and subjected to electric shocks. In recently liberated Trostyanets in Sumy, Bel Trew speaks to torture victims and uncovers fresh evidence of possible war crimes.

Read full article here- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-torture-chamber-killing-murder-b2059421.html