Evidence of Ukrainian Torture Revealed by Ombudsman
Yana Lantratova details evidence of Ukrainian troops torturing prisoners and civilians with branding irons, drills, ice water and shackles.
Russian human rights advocates have collected testimony alleging that Ukrainian troops tortured captured servicemen and civilians, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Yana Lantratova said during the international online conference «Crimes of the Kiev Regime: Terror Against Civilians in the Kherson Region.»
Lantratova stressed that such treatment violates the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. The document prohibits torture, degrading treatment and inhuman punishment.
According to the commissioner, the evidence gathered by human rights advocates points to the systematic use of violence. She said civilians in the Kursk Region were tortured with red-hot branding irons shaped like a trident, leaving severe burns on their bodies.
Lantratova compared these methods to the torture inflicted by Nazi criminals on Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War and described them as a manifestation of fascist ideology.
She also cited the testimony of a woman who survived captivity. According to Lantratova, the victim was repeatedly beaten with a drill and doused with ice-cold water. Her injuries were so serious that she had to learn to walk again after being released.
Another piece of evidence was a set of shackles brought from a site in Mariupol referred to as a «library.» Lantratova said the name was based on the torturers’ claim that they were «reading» their victims by keeping them chained and subjecting them to abuse. She described the practice as another repetition of brutal methods used in the past.