Prisoners have told of their ordeals (Image: Getty)
Prisoners have told of how a detention centre was turned into a “torture camp” for .
Detention Centre No. 2, or SIZO-2, in Taganrog was once a detention centre for young people and women with children.
But is has reportedly been used to detain captured Ukrainians for more than two and a half years, and has become notorious for “inhumane conditions”.
Some members of the armed forces were subjected to the treatment, it is alleged, in an effort to get them to confess to charges of terrorism.
People incarcerated have claimed that guards subjected them to beatings and torture, and suspending them upside down, Russian news outlet reports.
Ukrainian serviceman Oleksandr Maksimchuk described his experience in testimony to the Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don.
He said: “The torture was carried out as follows. They taped my eyes, hands and feet.
“They hung me upside down by my legs, wrapped bare wires around my fingers and applied an electric current at intervals of five to seven seconds.”
He added: “After the current was stopped, they put what I believe was a vacuum bag over my head and brought me to a state close to asphyxiation, while simultaneously punching me in the abdomen and ribs.”
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Ukraine POWs are being held by Russia (Image: Getty)
Maksimchuk claimed he was then tortured again on September 11 at SIZO-2. Ukrainian prisoners of war had begun to be brought to the facility two years prior, it is believed.
The serviceman added that he does not remember how long the torture lasted that day, because he lost consciousness several times. He was revived with cold water and ammonia.
Mediazona writes that, until mid-June, Mr Lisovets was held in the Taganrog detention centre “without any procedural status”.
His lawyer, Grigory Kreshchenetsky, said: “They don’t fuss around with Ukrainians in this detention centre at all. They rush into the cell in masks, beat everyone indiscriminately.”
Dmitry Lisovets tried to leave Mariupol, surrounded by Russian troops, with his aunt. He had been a member of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, and later under contract in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Mykola Kravchuk, a serviceman from the Azov battalion, wrote in a letter to his lawyers: “We were thrown from the back of KamAZ trucks—our hands tied and eyes blindfolded—and forced to line up against the wall under a hail of blows, where the beatings continued with hands, feet, batons and electric shockers.”
He also claimed that the prisoners were woken every day at 6am, and, after cleaning their cell, from 8am until 12pm, Ukrainians endured “investigative procedures”.
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Taganrog is not far from the occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol (Image: Getty)
These were often accompanied by beatings and abuse, it is alleged. It is said that prisoners were interrogated throughout the day, with a one-hour lunch break.
It is understood that former Russian detainees began returning to SIZO-2 in late 2024, after most Ukrainian prisoners had been transferred to various other detention facilities across the region.
Nevertheless, it is said that Russians continue to use the threat of transfer back to Taganrog to intimidate detainees, particularly against those who are “uncooperative”.
The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on January 9 that the Russian Memorial Center for Human Rights, the successor of the Memorial Human Rights Center that focused on human rights abuses in the Soviet era, said in October 2024 that the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) had assumed control over the SIZO-2 facility.
Experts added: “The UN has consistently reported on Russian forces’ ‘widespread and systematic torture’ of Ukrainian forces as nearly all interviewed Ukrainian POWs describe consistent experiences of torture while in Russian detention.”