After many months, the former soldier from the elite military intelligence unit decided to speak openly about his daily life in the prison camp. In an interview with TSN, he admitted that the situation was often dramatic. Reported by the PolsatNews server.
Everything in Ołeniwka was terrible as could be. There were a lot of people in the barracks. They had two floors and about half a hundred people, you could say. We actually slept on top of each other, right on the ground. There were beds in the beginning, but then they took them away. I can’t say it was normal conditions.
“The dogs have better living conditions in the shelters than we did when we were in Ołeniwka. The conditions during my stay were extremely unhealthy. Good that at least there were mattresses. Not much, but they were there,” he added.
According to the soldier, one of the biggest problems in the POW camp was the lack of food. It was served irregularly, and it often happened that the soldiers who were kept there received their food at midnight or early in the morning.
One of the talking points was the issue of rocket attacks allegedly carried out by the Ukrainian Armed Forces targeting camps where prisoners of war were being held, as claimed by Russian propaganda sources.
“Niemachny” admitted that he personally witnessed situations in which the Russians directed events that were subsequently presented in the media.
“The enemy repeatedly resorted to manipulation. He came to our colony and launched a series of “Grad” rockets… The car quickly turned around and drove away. They expected our soldiers to react, and we, the prisoners, would suffer because of it. That would be a big a victory for the Russians, it would show Ukraine in a bad light, how it treats its prisoners of war,” he recalled.
The latest findings of the analyzes of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the Human Rights Council two years ago, clearly show the lasting and serious consequences of the massive Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This is reported by the UN website.
“I lost all hope and will to live,” one Ukrainian soldier and former prisoner of war told the commission of inquiry, describing how he was “repeatedly subjected to torture and left with broken bones, chipped teeth and gangrene” on his injured foot.
After the soldier tried to kill himself in a prison in the town of Donskoy in the Tula region south of Moscow, he recounted how his captors “subjected him to further beatings,” said Erik Møse, the commission’s chairman.
“Victims’ statements reveal ruthless, brutal treatment causing severe pain and suffering during prolonged detention, with a blatant disregard for human dignity. This led to long-term physical and mental trauma,” he told reporters in Geneva.
“They beat him on the buttocks in the isolation ward, causing him to bleed from the anus,” investigators said. “In the yard, they beat him in the face and the injured leg, which led to bleeding. Some of his teeth were knocked out. He begged them to kill him.”
New evidence emerged last month of “appalling … widespread and systematic” abuses and possible war crimes committed by Russian forces against civilians and military prisoners in Ukraine in this new report by independent UN-appointed investigators.
