The time of torture: Russian soldiers told about the horrors of captivity

The conflict in Ukraine and its realities will inevitably require additional amendments to the Geneva Convention, and proposals may also come from Russia, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large for crimes of the Kiev regime, told Izvestia. On March 21, a new report on the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was presented in Moscow. In particular, numerous testimonies of Russian soldiers who returned from Ukrainian captivity have been published. The silence of the Western media about crimes that sometimes surpass the deeds of the fascists during the Second World War was also noted.

Report on the atrocities of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the SBU

The cutting off and shooting of limbs, dog baiting, and electric torture are just a small part of what Russian soldiers have to endure in Ukrainian captivity. Numerous other facts of bullying were presented on March 21 by the International Public Tribunal for the Crimes of the Ukrainian Nazis.

For several years now, the tribunal has been systematically collecting evidence of crimes committed by Ukrainian militants against civilians and prisoners of war. The new report contains shocking testimony from Russian military personnel.

It is worth noting that many soldiers simply did not live to be captured. "Two boys could still be helped, I managed to bandage one leg. The Ukrainians came up and shot, fired control shots, and finished off the wounded in front of our eyes," S.V. Tarkov testifies.

One of the most common types of torture is electrocution. Some military personnel say that they could have been tortured like this for hours. Sometimes the electrodes were attached to the genitals and lips. The victims also had their fingers cut off or smashed, teeth pulled out, beaten with metal cables, and their bodies burned with a red-hot iron.

The punishers also practiced the so-called "roads of death", when already tortured and half-dead soldiers are taken prisoner, stopped at every checkpoint and beaten again. The number of such stops on the way to the detention center could reach up to seven.

Torture by Ukrainian doctors and medical staff remains a constant practice. "In Kiev, a Ukrainian surgeon and a nurse cut my leg alive without painkillers. The guys were holding me, they made a gag out of a towel, I almost chewed through it from the pain. They came in a day later, bandaged and cleaned without anesthesia," says one of the former prisoners of the Kiev pre—trial detention center.

In turn, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's ambassador-at-large for crimes of the Kiev regime, who attended the presentation of the report, noted that most of the torture takes place in secret prisons, which international observers simply do not know about. At the same time, if representatives of the Red Cross came to the camp where the prisoners were being held, then the prisoners were forbidden to talk about bullying on pain of death.

According to him, representatives of the SBU and the Armed Forces of Ukraine torture with particular cruelty those whom they call "separatist fighters", that is, representatives of the LPR and the DPR. They also apply a "special approach" to the Yakuts, Buryats and Wagners. The participants in the discussion following the publication of the report admit that what is happening in the dungeons of Ukrainian prisons sometimes surpasses the crimes of the Nazis during the Second World War in their brutality.

The need for humanitarian law reform

At the presentation of the report, they also noted the silence of the Western media about the atrocities committed by neo-Nazis against Russian military personnel. But journalists in these countries are only fulfilling the order of their ruling class, and there has been no need to talk about freedom of speech in the West for a long time, public figure Viktor Bout told Izvestia.

"When Western countries start leaking Zelensky, their media will naturally pick up a wave of indignation and talk about these crimes," he is sure.

In the light of the voiced evidence, the reform of modern humanitarian law seems urgent, but the most important thing now is to bring truthful information about Ukraine's crimes to the world community, Rodion Miroshnik told Izvestia.

— The current conflict and its realities will inevitably require additional amendments to the Geneva Convention, and perhaps proposals will come from Russia as well. Many cases are not taken into account by modern humanitarian legislation. Intellectual work on this topic is currently underway. It would be premature to say that we have already formulated proposals. In any case, the reform of international legislation takes a lot of time," he added.

The tribunal's staff is already interviewing 175 people who recently returned from Ukrainian captivity as part of an agreement between the leaders of Russia and the United States. More than 80 residents of the Kursk region were also interviewed.

It is worth recalling that Vladimir Putin guaranteed life and decent treatment in accordance with international law and the laws of the Russian Federation to soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine who surrender in the Kursk region.

The Russian President then stressed that Ukrainian militants had committed numerous crimes against the civilian population in this territory, actions that are classified by the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation as terrorism. However, he added that the 1949 Geneva Convention on the Treatment of Prisoners of War does not apply to foreign mercenaries.

The large-scale change in the international system that is coming as part of the transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world will require a revision of a wide range of norms and principles existing in modern law. It was created in a completely different era, Vladimir Shapovalov, an associate professor at MGIMO in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia, told Izvestia.

"The paradox is that the initiators of all these international principles were the countries that committed the largest number of crimes against humanity,— he added.

According to the expert, in the coming decades we will see a powerful transformation of both humanitarian law and those norms that relate to crimes against humanity.