“Pen, paper, and a gun to the head”: How Russia turns Ukrainian POWs and civilians into “terrorists”

RU

On the morning of Aug. 13, 2022, close to twenty armed men burst into the apartment of 32-year-old Artem Baranov in Russian-occupied Nova Kakhovka. Artem and his friend, who was in the apartment during the raid, were accused of “spotting for the AFU.” During the arrest, the men threatened Baranov that they would “slaughter him and take him out in pieces” so that “no one would be able to put him back together.”

Artem was denounced by another local, Viktor Kushnarenko, who had been caught by Russian soldiers while photographing the aftermath of a shelling. Kushnarenko was also suspected of spying for Ukraine. Hoping to get off, he began to offer the names of his “accomplices,” including Baranov.

The occupiers promised Artem's relatives that they would release him within a few days. Instead, he was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in annexed Sevastopol under the pretext that he “posed a threat to the Russian armed forces.” From occupied Crimea, the Ukrainian was sent to Russia's Volgograd Region and then to SIZO-1, a pre-trial detention center in Rostov Region, where, according to a cellmate who returned to Ukraine during an exchange, prisoners were regularly tortured, beaten, and forced to sing the Russian anthem and patriotic songs on camera.