Screams from soldiers being tortured, overcrowded cells, inhumane conditions, a regime of intimidation and murder. Inedible porridge, no communication with the outside world and days marked on a homemade calendar written on a tea packet.
Ukrainian businesswoman Anna Vorosheva tells “The Guardian” correspondent Luke Harding about her experience of spending 100 days in the Olenivka detention center created by Russia.
Conditions are appalling at Olenivka, the notorious detention center outside Donetsk where dozens of Ukrainian soldiers burned to death in Russian captivity late last month, according to prisoners there.
Anna Vorosheva, a 45-year-old Ukrainian businesswoman, gave a disturbing account of her time in prison. She spent 100 days in Olenivka after being detained in mid-March at a checkpoint of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) in eastern Ukraine.
She had tried to deliver humanitarian supplies to Mariupol, her hometown, which was besieged by the Russian army. She was arrested by separatists and taken to prison in a full police van, where she was held until early July on terrorism charges.
Now recovering in France, Vorosheva said she has no doubt that Russia “cynically and deliberately” murdered Ukrainian prisoners of war. “We’re talking about absolute evil,” she said.
The fighters were blown up on July 29 in a mysterious and devastating explosion. Moscow claims Ukraine killed them with a US-made Himars precision-guided missile. However, satellite images and independent analysis suggest they were destroyed by a powerful bomb detonated inside the building.
Russia reports that 53 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded. Ukraine has been unable to confirm these figures and has called for an investigation. The dead were members of the Azov battalion. They had defended the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
The day before the explosion, she was moved to a separate area in the industrial zone of the camp. A video shown on Russian state television shows charred bodies and twisted metal bunk beds.
“Russia did not want them to stay alive. I am sure that some of those “killed” in the explosion were already corpses. It was a convenient way to account for the fact that they were tortured to death,” she said.
Male prisoners were regularly taken out of their cells, beaten, then put back in prison. “We heard their cries,” she said. “They played loud music to drown out the screams. The torture went on all the time. The interrogators joked about it and asked the prisoners, ‘What happened to your face?'” The soldier replied, “I fell”, and they laughed.
“It was a show of strength. The prisoners realized that anything could happen to them, that they could easily be killed.
Vorosheva said that around Olenivka, known as Correctional Colony No. 120, there is constant traffic. The former Soviet agricultural school was converted into a prison in the 1980s and later abandoned. The DNR began using it earlier this year to house enemy civilians.
She estimated that about 2,500 people were held in the camp, and at times the number reached 3,500-4,000. There was no running water or electricity.
She said the atmosphere changed when about 2,000 Azov fighters were brought in by bus on the morning of May 17. Russian flags were raised.
“We were often called Nazis and terrorists. One of the women in my cell was a medic from Azov. She was pregnant. I asked if I could give her my food ration. I was told, ‘No, she’s a murderer.’ The only question they asked , was: “Do you know any Azov soldiers?”
Conditions for female prisoners were grim. She said that she was not tortured, but that they barely received food – 50 g of bread for dinner and sometimes porridge. “It was good for pigs,” she said. She suspected that the prison governor had embezzled the money allocated for meals. Toilets overflowed and women were not given any hygiene products. The cells were so crowded that they slept in shifts. “It was hard. People were crying, worried about their children and families.”
Asked if the guards had ever shown any sympathy, she said an anonymous person once left them a bottle of shampoo.
According to Voroshev, the camp staff were brainwashed by Russian propaganda and believed that Ukrainians were Nazis. Some were local villagers. “They blamed us for making their lives terrible. It was like an alcoholic who says he drinks vodka because his wife is no good.
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