Inside Russia’s torture prisons for Ukrainian POWs: Guards are ordered to ‘be cruel, without pity’ and experiment to find new ways to brutalise and inflict pain – as horrifying tactics are revealed

Harrowing testimony has revealed the brutal methods used by Vladimir Putin’s prison guards on Ukrainian prisoners of war, with Russian defectors describing how they were told to have no pity and experiment with new ways to inflict pain on their victims.

Major General Igor Potapenko, the head of St Petersburg’s prisons, reportedly told the elite guards responsible for the prisoners coming from Ukraine to ‘be cruel’, according to a new report.

He and other prison chiefs oversaw a the establishment of a new penal system specifically for Ukrainian POWs – one without the normal rules applied to prison officers and with no restrictions on violence.

These orders – replicated in prisons across Russia – enabled guards to brutalise POWs in relentless campaigns of torture, the Wall Street Journal reports citing testimony from former Russian prison officials and Ukrainian prisoners.

Guards applied electric shocks to prisoners’ genitals, with the shockers even said to have been used on prisoners in the showers.

The devices are reportedly used so often that officers complained about them losing battery power too quickly.

One former prison employee described how guards would beat Ukrainians until their batons broke, with implements piling up after being discarded and sadistic officers turning to other materials such as hot water pipes to maximise pain and damage.

Prisoners are brutally beaten for even looking a guard in the eye, the ex-employee said, and guards would ritually beat them in the same area of their bodies to prevent their injuries from healing. 

Ukrainian former POW Andriy Yegorov, 25, who was held in Russia’s western Bryansk region, described how prisoners would be forced to run 100 yards through the hallwa while holding mattresses above their heads. 

The guards would then stand at the side and beat them in the ribs as they ran by, he said, before making them do sit-ups and push-ups when they reached the end. 

Each time they came up, he added, the sick guards would punch them or hit them with a baton – with many enjoying the sadistic torture.

‘They loved it, you could hear them laughing between themselves while we cried out in pain,’ he said. 

‘There I understood fear exists only for the future, you can be afraid of what happens in 10 or 15 minutes, you can be afraid of what might happen. But when it’s happening, you’re no longer afraid.’

Guards were told to remove their body cameras – mandatory elsewhere in the Russian prison system – so that their activities would not be recorded.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said last year: ‘The torture by starvation is monstrous, the beatings and violence are sophisticated. 

‘There are no Geneva Conventions anymore… Russia again thinks it can avoid being held accountable for massive war crimes.’ 

While Ukraine does not publish numbers of prisoners of war being held by Russia, the total number being held is thought to be more than 8,000. 

The UK’s Deputy Ambassador to the Organization for Security & Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) told the body last week that Britain

‘The UK demands an immediate end to all atrocities and calls for independent investigations to hold all perpetrators accountable; from those carrying out abuses to those ordering them,’ she said.

‘Alongside our international partners, we will ensure that those responsible – at all levels of the Russian state – face justice.’

It comes after horrific images of released POWs showed how emaciated they had become after months in captivity.

The state of the men suggests they have had limited nourishment – despite the Geneva Convention stating that POWs should be provided with sufficient rations and kept in ‘good health’.

As well as enduring a lack of food, many show clear signs of physical abuse, including cigarette burns and bruises across their bodies.

The stark evidence of the mistreatment comes as Ukraine continues to investigate the summary executions of POWs, which observers say is happening more and more.

“The upward trend is very clear, very obvious,” says Yuri Belousov, the head of the War Department at the Ukrainian Prosecutor-General’s Office recently told the BBC.

He said that executions became ‘systemic’ from late 2023 and had continued throughout last year.

“They are happening across vast areas and they have clear signs of being part of a policy – there is evidence that instructions to this effect are being issued,’ he said.

International humanitarian law – namely the Third Geneva Convention – offers protection to prisoners of war, and executing them is a war crime.