KHERSON, Ukraine, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Residents in Ukraine’s southern metropolis of Kherson call the two-storey police station “The Hole”. Vitalii Serdiuk, a pensioner, mentioned he was fortunate to make it out alive.
“I hung on,” the retired medical tools repairman mentioned as he recounted his ordeal in Russian detention two blocks from the place he and his spouse dwell in a tiny Soviet-era condominium.
The green-roofed police constructing at No. 3, Energy Workers’ Street, was probably the most infamous of a number of websites the place, in line with greater than half a dozen locals within the lately recaptured metropolis, folks have been interrogated and tortured throughout Russia’s nine-month occupation. Another was a big jail.
Two residents dwelling in an condominium block overlooking the police station courtyard mentioned they noticed our bodies wrapped in white sheets being carried from the constructing, saved in a storage and later tossed into refuse vans to be taken away.
Reuters couldn’t independently confirm all of the occasions described by the Kherson residents.
The Kremlin and Russia’s defence ministry didn’t instantly reply to questions on Serdiuk’s account or that of others Reuters spoke to in Kherson.
Moscow has rejected allegations of abuse in opposition to civilians and troopers and has accused Ukraine of staging such abuses in locations like Bucha.
On Tuesday, the U.N. human rights workplace mentioned it had discovered proof that either side had tortured prisoners of conflict, which is assessed as a conflict crime by the International Criminal Court. Russian abuse was “fairly systematic”, a U.N. official mentioned.
As Russian safety forces retreat from massive swathes of territory within the north, east and south, proof of abuses is mounting.
Those held in Kherson included individuals who voiced opposition to Russia’s occupation, residents, like Serdiuk, believed to have details about enemy troopers’ positions, in addition to suspected underground resistance fighters and their associates.
Serdiuk mentioned he was crushed on his legs, again and torso with a truncheon and shocked with electrodes wired to his scrotum by a Russian official demanding to know the whereabouts and unit of his son, a soldier within the Ukrainian military.
“I didn’t tell him anything. ‘I don’t know’ was my only answer,” the 65-year-old mentioned in his condominium, which was lit by a single candle.
‘Remember! Remember! Remember!’ was the fixed response.”
‘PURE SADISM’
Grim recollections of life under occupation in Kherson have followed the unbridled joy and relief when Ukrainian soldiers retook the city on Friday after Russian troops withdrew across the Dnipro River.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said two days later that investigators had uncovered more than 400 Russian war crimes and found the bodies of both servicemen and civilians in areas of Kherson region freed from Russian occupation.
“I personally noticed 5 our bodies taken out,” said Oleh, 20, who lives in an apartment block overlooking the police station, declining to give his last name. “We might see palms hanging from the sheets and we understood these to be corpses.”
Speaking individually, Svytlana Bestanik, 41, who lives in the identical block and works at a small retailer between the constructing and the station, additionally recalled seeing prisoners finishing up our bodies.
“They would carry lifeless folks out and would throw them in a truck with the rubbish,” she said, describing the stench of decomposing bodies in the air. “We have been witnessing sadism in its purest kind.”
Reuters journalists visited the police station on Tuesday but were prohibited from going beyond the courtyard, rimmed by a razor wire-topped wall, by armed police officers and a soldier who said that investigators were inside collecting evidence.
One officer, who declined to provide his identify, mentioned that as much as 12 detainees have been stored in tiny cages, an account corroborated by Serdiuk.
Neighbours recounted listening to screams of women and men coming from the station and mentioned that at any time when the Russians emerged, they wore balaclavas concealing all however their eyes.
“They got here within the store on daily basis,” said Bestanik. “I made a decision to not speak to them. I used to be too afraid of them.”
RESISTANCE FIGHTERS
Aliona Lapchuk mentioned she and her eldest son fled Kherson in April after a terrifying ordeal by the hands of Russian safety personnel on March 27, the final time she noticed her husband Vitaliy.
[1/7] Vitalii Serdiuk, 65, who says he was tortured by Russian service members, and his wife Olena speak during an interview with Reuters after Russia’s retreat from Kherson, Ukraine, November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
Vitaliy had been an underground resistance fighter since Russian troops seized Kherson on March 2, in line with Lapchuk, and he or she turned anxious when he didn’t reply her telephone calls.
Soon after, she mentioned, three vehicles with the Russian “Z” sign painted on them pulled up at her mother’s home where they were living. They brought Vitaliy, who was badly beaten.
The soldiers, who identified themselves as Russian troops, threatened to smash out her teeth when she tried to berate them. They confiscated their mobile phones and laptops, she said, and then discovered weapons in the basement.
They beat her husband within the basement savagely earlier than dragging him out.
“He did not stroll out of the basement; they dragged him out. They broke by way of his cheek bone,” she said, sobbing, in the village of Krasne, some 100 km (60 miles) west of Kherson.
Lapchuk and her eldest son, Andriy, were hooded and taken to the police station at 4, Lutheran Street, in Kherson where she could hear her husband being interrogated through a wall, she said. She and Andriy were later released.
After leaving Kherson, Lapchuk wrote to everybody she might suppose of to attempt to discover her husband.
On June 9, she mentioned she received a message from a pathologist who instructed her to call the following day. She knew instantly Vitaliy was lifeless.
His physique had been discovered floating in a river, she mentioned, displaying images taken by a pathologist during which a start mark on his shoulder might be seen.
Lapchuk mentioned she paid for Vitaliy to be buried and has but to see the grave.
She is satisfied her husband was betrayed to the Russians by somebody very near them.
‘THE HOLE’
Ruslan, 52, who runs a beer store opposite the police station where Serdiuk was held, said that at the beginning of the occupation, Russian-made Ural trucks would pull up daily before the grey front door.
Detainees, he mentioned, could be hurled from the again, their palms sure and heads coated by luggage.
“This place was referred to as ‘Yama’ (The Hole),” he mentioned.
Serhii Polako, 48, a dealer who lives throughout the road from the station, echoed Ruslan’s account.
He mentioned that a number of weeks into the occupation, Russian nationwide guard troops deployed on the website have been changed by males driving automobiles embossed with the letter “V”, and that was when the screams began.
“If there’s a hell on earth, it was there,” he mentioned.
About two weeks in the past, he mentioned, the Russians freed these being stored within the station in obvious preparation for his or her withdrawal.
“All of a sudden, they emptied the place, and we understood one thing was occurring,” he instructed Reuters.
Serdiuk believes he was betrayed by an informant as the daddy of a Ukrainian serviceman.
He mentioned Russian safety personnel handcuffed him, put a bag over his head, compelled him to bend on the waist and frog-marched him right into a automobile.
At the station, he was put in a cell so cramped that the occupants couldn’t transfer whereas mendacity down. On some days, prisoners acquired just one meal.
The following day, he was hooded, his palms sure, and brought right down to a cellar room. The interrogation and torture lasted about 90 minutes, he mentioned.
His Russian interrogator knew all of his details and those of his family, and said that unless he cooperated, he would have his wife arrested and telephone his son so he could hear both of them screaming under torture, Serdiuk said.
Two days later, he was released without explanation. His wife found him outside the shop in which Bestanik works, virtually unable to walk.
Tom Balmforth reported from Krasne, Ukraine; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Philippa Fletcher
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