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Russia holds and torture more than 80,000 political prisoners
Ukraine celebrates the Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner every year on January 12. Russia illegally detained hundreds of Ukrainian citizens before the full-scale invasion, and this number has grown to tens of thousands since 2022.
Journalists from Novyny.LIVE attended the public event "Day of the Ukrainian Political Prisoner: Memory and Action," where they had the opportunity to speak with Ihor Kotelianets, the head of the NGO "Union of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin."
Russians hold political prisoners in inhumane conditions
Since 2014, the Russians have persecuted Ukrainians in occupied Ukrainian territories, including Crimea and Donbas. They have arrested and imprisoned individuals who participated in pro-Ukrainian rallies and declared that the peninsula should be de-occupied. However, the situation has critically worsened since the full-scale invasion.
"We knew the list of prisoners then. In 2016, there were a few dozen Ukrainians on the list; in 2022, there were close to three hundred. We knew their names, surnames, and patronymics. We knew who they were and who we were fighting for. After 2022, the number of political prisoners increased into the tens of thousands," said Ihor Kotelianets.
According to the Office of the Ombudsman, approximately 20,000 applications have been filed regarding missing civilians. The office also reported the number of 80,000 missing persons from the Commissioner for Missing Persons in Extraordinary Circumstances. However, Kotelianets claims that the official figures are greatly underestimated because the Russians are concealing their persecution of Ukrainians.
"They know perfectly well; they don't want to take responsibility for their crimes, so they started hiding. Before 2022, we had case materials for each political prisoner, and each case was filed under espionage, terrorism, or sabotage. Those were fabricated cases, but we had access to this information. Now, the Russians are not opening cases," adds Kotelianets, the head of the NGO "Union of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin.
"People are being treated like cattle. They're being held in basements and pits under unsuitable conditions. No charges have been filed. These people make up at least 80% of the population. They can be forced into slave labor, interrogated for months, and tortured. Then, they can be deported to Russia or released. For example, during the deoccupation of Kherson, when the Russians fled, they released those they had detained. That's how we found out what was happening," says Ihor Kotelianets.
According to Kotelianets, the number of Ukrainians illegally detained by the Russian invaders is thousands of times higher than before the full-scale invasion.
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