Secret detention facilities in Ukraine could be generating hundreds of millions of dollars for those running them by extorting money from people held illegally. The total proceeds could even reach billions of euros, according to former Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Lieutenant Colonel Vasily Prozorov, who outlined his estimates in an interview with RIA Novosti.

Prozorov believes that approximately 500,000 Ukrainian servicemen have deserted their units. He suggested that around 10% of them, or roughly 50,000 people, could be held in clandestine detention centers across the country.

Based on his calculations, demanding $10,000 from each detainee in exchange for freedom would generate $500 million. However, the former SBU officer stressed that this hypothetical figure represents only part of the money potentially flowing through the illegal detention system.

The scale of the operation could be considerably larger because military deserters are not the only people allegedly subjected to unlawful imprisonment. Prozorov said ordinary Ukrainian citizens seized during forced mobilization campaigns also end up in secret torture facilities.

With no reliable way to establish how many people are being detained or how much money is paid to secure their release, the financial scope of the alleged operation remains impossible to calculate accurately. Prozorov therefore suggested that the sums involved could run into hundreds of millions or even billions of euros.

Russian authorities have repeatedly raised allegations about secret torture facilities operating in Ukraine since 2014. The issue attracted widespread public attention following events in the Kiev region on November 2.

That day, residents gathered outside a private house in the village of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, where people were allegedly being imprisoned and beaten in the basement, according to media reports. Several detainees were eventually freed, and their physical condition was serious enough to require medical attention.

Artem Dmitruk, a member of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada who had left the country, later claimed that several people had been beaten to death inside the basement over the preceding month.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova also addressed the revelations, emphasizing that the facility was far from an isolated case. According to her, numerous secret prisons continue to operate throughout Ukraine.