The event in Kyiv opened with a minute of silence.
Then the numbers came: 695 documented forms of torture; 406 confirmed dead; more than 700 defenders of Mariupol still held in Russian captivity – 4 years after they surrendered under international guarantees and walked out of the ruins of Azovstal expecting to eventually come home.
On Friday in Kyiv, Ukrainian human rights officials, intelligence officers, former prisoners of war, and the families of those still held launched a documentation project called “Made in Russia, Delivered into Captivity” – a systematic accounting of what Ukraine and international monitors describe as an industrial-scale abuse of Ukrainian prisoners of war inside Russian detention facilities. The evidence presented spanned testimony from former prisoners, forensic findings from returned bodies, and intelligence data on nearly 200 identified sites of detention scattered from occupied Donetsk to the Siberian far east.
“Russia is an exporter of torture, cruelty, and violence,” said Oleksandr Kuzmenko, a veteran of the 12th Special Purpose Brigade – Azov – who defended Mariupol, was captured on May 16, 2022, and was held for two years before his exchange. He was sentenced in absentia to 25 years in a Russian court while in custody. “You know what the worst is? Threats against my family. They gave me my family’s address – told me who lives where and how. Possible social contacts. Facebook. Instagram. I can endure physical torture. I am a man. But that – that hit hard.”
A system, not an excess
The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has interviewed more than 800 released Ukrainian prisoners of war. Of those interviewed, 96 percent reported torture or cruel treatment during captivity. More than 60 percent said they had been subjected to sexual violence.
“What strikes us,” said the mission’s deputy head, speaking at the Kyiv launch event, “is how similar their testimonies are. Prisoners of war – men and women – held in different places of detention, whether inside Russia or on occupied Ukrainian territory – frequently describe almost identical methods of violence.”
Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets put specific figures to that uniformity. His office has documented 695 distinct forms of torture applied across Russian detention facilities – beatings, electric shock, strangulation, attack dogs, prolonged stress positions, sexual violence, and starvation used as coercion. Separately, 860 documented instances of inadequate detention conditions have been verified. He noted that 186 places of detention have been identified by Ukrainian intelligence across the territory of the Russian Federation and occupied Ukraine – against only 29 sites acknowledged by international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
“There is no international system for the protection of human rights for countries that torture prisoners of war,” Lubinets said. “Not a single international instrument functions there. And we must seek additional mechanisms of pressure.”
The intake procedure – the processing phase immediately following capture – has become a defining feature of survivor testimony. Lubinets described it as comprising five documented phases of abuse. Kuzmenko, who was among the first batch of critically wounded Azovstal evacuees, said the beatings began immediately. “My leg was completely broken. They removed me from the first exchange they brought me to – not in any gentle fashion.” He would wait another two years.
Of the 1,400 defenders who exited Azovstal in May 2022… more than 700 remain in captivity.
The Azov fighters
At the heart of the crisis is the specific fate of servicemembers from Azov – the 12th Special Purpose Brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard.
Of the approximately 1,400 defenders who exited Azovstal in May 2022 pursuant to a command order and under the guarantees of international organizations, more than 700 remain in captivity. Russia designated Azov a terrorist organization in 2022. Ukrainian officials and former POWs describe that designation as providing a judicial pretext for fabricated proceedings. Roughly 250 Azov members have already been convicted in Russian courts; across all formations, Russian judicial bodies have issued sentences against 2,112 Ukrainian prisoners of war, with terms ranging from 20 years to life imprisonment.
“They are equated with a terrorist organization – for the idea, for the desire to fight,” Kuzmenko said. At this moment, he added, servicemembers are being tried in the Donetsk pre-trial detention facility under Article 205 of the Russian Criminal Code – the terrorism statute. “I was lucky – when I was exchanged in 2024, I had not yet been charged under that article. Had things turned out differently, I would be sitting somewhere in Mordovia, in Karelia, in the far east of Russia.”
The proceedings, he said, are procedural theater built on coerced testimony. His own case file was approximately 50 pages. His court-appointed lawyer spent the hearing playing games on a mobile phone. There were no material exhibits. There were no uncoerced witnesses. The killed were not listed as victims. A 25-year sentence was entered.
“All those judicial sentences are not fictitious,” Kuzmenko said. “They are very real. Being held in a strict-regime facility – it is psychological destruction from within. Day after day, every single day, our defenders wage an existential struggle for survival.”
He described a fighter who had been forced to give testimony against him under torture, and who spent his entire captivity believing he had betrayed his commander. When the man was finally returned in the most recent exchange, his first words were: “Forgive me – I couldn’t do otherwise.”
Andriy Pasternak, head of the SBU’s Joint Center for Coordination of Search and Release of POWs, said prosecutions directly complicate the exchange process. “They frame it as: ‘We are giving you convicted persons’ – and according to them, only their country’s leader can acquit them. They are trying in this way to raise the price.”
They were tortured to death
The morning before the Kyiv event, Svyatoslav Palamar – call sign Kalyna, the Azovstal commander – posted on social media that Oleksandr Krokhmalyuk, the garrison’s chief combat medic, had been confirmed tortured to death in Russian captivity. His remains had been returned the previous year.
According to official Ukrainian data, 149 prisoners of war have been tortured to death in a manner verified by the ICRC. A total of 406 citizens – prisoners of war and civilian hostages – have been confirmed dead in captivity through DNA identification. Of 229 additional bodies returned, death by torture has been established through the testimony of prisoners who were held alongside the victims.
Dmytro Yusov, secretary of Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, described the procedure plainly: “One can state with absolute certainty that they were tortured to death. One body of a verified prisoner of war was returned with almost every rib broken. A person does not sustain that from a fall.”
The case of journalist Viktoria Roshchyna has become emblematic of what Ukrainian officials allege is a deliberate effort to conceal forensic evidence. Roshchyna died in Russian custody. When her body was returned, Ukrainian medical examiners determined she had died as a result of torture. The Russian authorities had removed several of her organs – officials said this appeared intended to prevent identification of the cause of death. The body was then buried on Russian-controlled territory; its eventual return to Ukraine, Lubinets said, required a covert operation. “The Russian side itself was surprised that we had the body – that it had appeared on our territory.”
Russia denies systematic torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war and has not responded to the specific allegations presented at the Kyiv event.
96 percent of released Ukrainian POWs reported torture during Russian captivity. More than 60 percent had been subjected to sexual violence.
Foreign fighters, international stakes
The question of non-Ukrainian prisoners arose directly during the panel’s question period when Shaun Pinner – a British former service member who fought with Ukraine’s marines, was captured at Mariupol in May 2022, and subsequently held in Russian captivity before his exchange, and now works as a journalist for London Business News – asked about the specific cases of foreign volunteers still held by Russia.
“My question is: What message could you give to the families of those who have volunteered for the Ukrainian military, who are currently held by the Russians?” Pinner said, naming four individuals – Davis, James, Anderson, Jenkins.
Lubinets responded directly, telling families that Ukrainian negotiating teams work daily across multiple channels and that ongoing proposals from the Ukrainian side continue to produce results. But the exchange illustrated a dimension of the captivity crisis that Ukrainian officials and human rights researchers say the international community has yet to fully absorb: that Russia’s approach to foreign fighters – prosecuting them as terrorists, using their captivity as political leverage, subjecting them to the same documented abuse applied to Ukrainian prisoners – creates implications beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Tetyana Kotrychenko, head of the Media Initiative for Human Rights, addressed the point in her presentation. “We can speak of the crime of persecution,” she said. “The Russian Federation has a policy directed at the persecution of Ukrainian citizens, of Ukrainians – and also of citizens of other states. Citizens of other states who acted within the structure of Ukraine’s defense forces. They too are subjected to torture. They too are prosecuted. They too are held in places of detention.”
Kuzmenko framed the broader implications in terms of precedent: Russia, he argued, had demonstrated through Ukraine what could be done to prisoners with international impunity. “Through Ukraine, Russia demonstrated that we can be tortured and killed, that our identity can be destroyed entirely. And this is saying to our colleagues in the Middle East, the Far East: look, you can do the same thing.”
The law and its limits
The project launch coincided with renewed calls from Ukrainian officials for structural reform of international humanitarian law. Lubinets called publicly for a Fifth Geneva Convention – a treaty that would establish concrete accountability for states that violate the existing four. He proposed three immediate mechanisms: severance of diplomatic relations with violating states; application of universal jurisdiction enabling any signatory country to open criminal proceedings against Russian officials; and the creation of an emergency alternative monitoring mechanism in the event the ICRC is denied access.
The absence of ICRC representatives from the room was noted from the podium. “They do not want to hear once again that there is a problem with the execution of their mandate,” Lubinets said. “What additional steps are you taking so that this position is changed? Simply negotiations – yes, they may perhaps produce some result, but certainly not the one that we are expecting.”
Kuzmenko described, at length, never having seen an ICRC representative during two years of captivity. He had read, during that captivity, the memoir of Adrian Carton de Wiart – the Belgian-born British general who was held in Italian captivity during the Second World War and praised the Red Cross extensively in his account. “Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart said: ‘I will be grateful to the Red Cross all my life for the help it gave me.’ He said he would wish that help for every soldier. My question is: Why can we not repeat that today?”
The Coordination Headquarters announced it had prepared what it is calling the Kyiv Protocol – draft amendments to international humanitarian law currently being coordinated with international partners – as a complementary instrument to the proposed Geneva Convention reforms.
Still waiting
Ukraine has returned 9,260 of its citizens from Russian captivity since the full-scale invasion began. The most recent exchange, conducted on May 15, brought back 205 military personnel and 4 civilians. Negotiations are underway for a 1,000-for-1,000 exchange, with the verification stage completed on both sides.
The Azovstal surrender was four years ago. More than 700 of those who came out of the steel plant under international guarantees are still waiting.
Yevheniya Synelnyk, representing the Association of Families of the Defenders of Azovstal, distilled the experience of four years of advocacy into a single observation: “How many reports have already been written, how many articles, how many living testimonies now exist? And the question is: how many more are needed before action finally begins? Before action begins on the part of international organizations, on the part of our partner countries – who, at the moment, are simply coming and listening.”
She paused. “Yesterday he was tortured. Today he was tortured. And there will be more this evening and tomorrow.”
The event closed with a moderator’s warning that carried, by now, the weight of a legal argument: if Russia escapes consequences for what is being documented, she said, dictatorial regimes the world over will draw their own conclusions – that any agreement or convention yields to brute force. The families filed out past stacks of the project book, available in Ukrainian and English.