Captured

Stories

In the Taganrog detention center, in front of the guards, Viktoriia Roshchyna tried to cut her veins in order to get a psychologist brought to her, according to testimony from a person released from captivity.

Torture, exile, and escape across the front line. How a Ukrainian lawyer broke free from occupation after imprisonment in an FSB torture chamber

“Mom, I don’t want to go back there…”: blind political prisoner Sizikov was released from a penal colony due to his health, then the decision was overturned

“He often crossed the administrative border with a Ukrainian passport”: yesterday’s student Mamut Belyalov was sentenced to 12 years in Crimea

‘They laughed and rejoiced that they had captured a Pole’ : Russians captured a European civilian and tortured him to death

The prison guards of “Izolyatsia” replicated torture methods shown in the American film The Mauritanian: the account of Daniil Bulhakov about his three years in the “DPR” prisons

“I Was a ‘Dead Ukrainian’ for the Russians: The Life of a 64-Year-Old Doctor, Antique Dealer, and Partisan from Donetsk, Held Captive for Seven Years.”

“You cannot give up territory hoping that it will be the end of the war,” said pediatric doctor and Kremlin prisoner Yurii Shapovalov

Freedom of speech in the occupied territories: repression and new mechanisms of pressure in 2025

Crimean resident Bohdan Ziza: “Write to political prisoners — it’s absolutely vital!”

“You’ve got partisans on your hands.” How a Crimean resident challenged Russia

“Kh*khly, we’re already tired of beating you.” Azov fighter ‘Yuzhnyi’ on two years of torture in Taganrog, prisoners’ humor, and his own survival system.

“Relatives said: people like you should be wiped out.” The story of a woman who survived torture chambers and escaped twice from occupied Mariupol

Neighbors reported them. 280 days of family captivity: abuse and blackmail

“I died in that torture chamber”: the story of a Kherson resident

He calls torture a ‘spectrum of procedures’ and prison a ‘sanatorium.’ The story of a Kherson man who created the first male network of ‘graduates’ of torture chambers

The story of a teacher rescued from captivity in the occupied territory by the Main Intelligence Directorate: '20 years in prison or the death penalty'

“Russia Is a Big Prison” — Head of Institute of National Remembrance on Systematic Use of Sexual Violence Against Ukrainian Men

Survived captivity and spoke out: what Russian forces do to prisoners of war.

“I consider this a God-pleasing cause.” The story of a chaplain and IT specialist from Luhansk who became an FPV drone operator.

“He took the horrors of Bucha very hard.” The story of Crimean resident Bohdan Ziza, sentenced by Russia for “terrorism.”

“They told my mother that I am an enemy of the people,” – the story of the head of the Dvorichanska community, who spent nearly three months in captivity

“There, on the little star – Kyrylo”: a mother’s story of surviving captivity and losing her soldier son

“They don’t consider you a human being”: stories of women who survived Russian captivity.

'A week in the basement, starving and losing my mind' – a childcare worker from Kherson on her captivity during the occupation

Torture and ‘Terrorism’ Cases: The Story of Mariupol Volunteers Released from Captivity in Olenivka

At any moment they could be ‘discarded’: how male prisoners survive in a filtration camp

‘They made me stand in front of a pit with corpses.’ The story of a Kherson resident’s week in Russian captivity

The occupiers detained 33 volunteers and branded them ‘terrorists’. The stories of drivers who rescued people in Mariupol.

“I heard them carrying out bodies”: an ATO veteran from Kherson recounts how he survived captivity by Russian occupiers