Lukianivske SIZO pre-trial detention center has seen many famous prisoners, from Bolshevik leaders to former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.
But now it is about to be demolished and replaced by a new jail going up outside of Kyiv.
The Justice Ministry put the notorious prison, which is nearly 150 years old, on sale on Feb. 10. The ministry wants a private investor to build a new prison outside the city in exchange for the land currently taken up by the old prison building.
At least two investors have contacted the Justice Ministry since the deal was announced on Feb. 10. Their names have not been disclosed as of yet.
The new prison will be co-owned by the state and a private investor, but the ministry hasn’t specified yet where and when it will be constructed. One possible new location is a land plot near Irpen, a city 18 kilometers northwest from Kyiv, according to Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko.
Two main reasons prompted the sale: The ministry wants to remove an undesirable place from the city center and improve conditions for prisoners. Lukianivske SIZO prison was built largely in the 19th century and its cells have been in extremely poor condition for a long time.
“It’s a system for torturing people who haven’t even been found guilty yet,” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said of Lukianivske SIZO at a Cabinet meeting on Feb. 10. “One can’t survive – let alone live – in such conditions.”
The prison has a prime location: It stands on almost three hectares of land, surrounded by five-story apartment buildings close to the Lukianivska metro station, in the western part of the city center.
The place has a bad reputation, however. It is here that Ukraine’s most notorious political prisoners, like ex-Prime Minister Tymoshenko and lawmaker Yuriy Lutsenko, were kept for months during their sham trials under the rule of ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych.
The main building of Lukianivske SIZO was constructed in 1862, with several more buildings added in the late 19th century, and one built in the 2000s. Around 2,100 prisoners are now kept in its cells. The majority live in common cells, up to 25 people per cell.
The poor living conditions in the prison were revealed in a 2012 video investigation aired on Ukrainian television’s TVi Channel. The film included testimony from former and current prisoners who complained about beatings by prison staff and the overcrowded cells, which were cold in winter and unbearably hot in summer. The prison’s director was fired shortly after the investigation was aired.
But the ill-famed prison didn’t stay out of the news headlines for long.
On Jan. 1, Makar Kolesnykov, 26, a prisoner of the Lukianivske SIZO, died of pancreatitis in his cell. Kolesnikov, an activist of a right-wing organization, was facing trial for kidnapping.
“The conditions in SIZO are far worse than in any jail,” former political prisoner Lutsenko said during a discussion of Criminal Code amendments regarding remand prisons on Nov. 26 last year.
After the Lukianivske SIZO prison is successfully relocated, the Justice Ministry plans to do the same to remand prisons in other big cities, starting with those in Lviv and Kharkiv.
