Ukraine’s State Security Service has detained a man in Sloviansk, Donetsk Oblast, who allegedly kept Ukrainian soldiers hostage and subjected them to torture, beatings and degrading treatment in August-December 2014 in Donetsk.
The man was arrested on Feb. 13 when he traveled from the separatist stronghold Donetsk to Ukrainian-controlled Sloviansk to get his pension payment.
Video published by the Security Service of Ukraine shows a man who is suspected of torturing Ukrainian soldiers in 2014 being detained in Sloviansk on Feb. 13.
The man who was known by a nom de guerre Krutoi (Cool) joined Russian-backed separatists back in spring 2014 and used to keep and torture prisoners in the former security service building in Donetsk. Officials have identified at least 11 victims of the arrested man.
In their 2015 report, Amnesty International explained that in 2014 the detainees of the Russian-separatists’ fighters – both military and civilians – were often given daily beatings, including with blunt objects, fists, and legs, and were subject to forced labor.
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has launched criminal proceedings against the man who will now spend two months in jail while the investigation is underway.
Combined Russian-separatist forces attacked Ukrainian army positions in Donbas about 72 times in the past 24 hours, leaving one Ukrainian soldier wounded. Donetsk’s Oblast Avdiyivka as well as the villages of Nevelske, Verkhniotoretske, Troyitske, Pavlopil, and Shyrokyne remained hot spots.
Some 36,000 militants, including 3,000 servicemen of the Russian armed forces, are now fighting in the Donbas against the Ukrainian army, as estimated by Dmytro Tymchuk, a Ukrainian lawmaker and coordinator of the analytical group Information Resistance.
