Source: Ukrainska Pravda
Author: Olena Barsukova

In late March, Russian occupiers captured 33 volunteers from Mariupol who were evacuating residents and delivering humanitarian aid.

The Russians imprisoned them at the site of the former penal colony No. 120 in occupied Olenivka and charged them with “terrorism.”

The Ukrainians spent over 100 days in captivity before being released.

Currently, 32 volunteers have been released from captivity—one driver, Serhiy Tarasenko, remains in the colony.

Volunteers Hanna Vorosheva, Kostyantyn Velychko, and Stanislav Glushkov held a press conference in Warsaw, which was broadcast by the Polish YouTube channel Telewizja Obywatelska.

They spoke about their imprisonment, the conditions at the Olenivka penal colony, and their long journey to freedom.

"UP. Life" recorded the most important moments of this conversation.

 

"They blindfolded us and tied our hands with duct tape, then put bags over our heads"

All the volunteers abducted by the Russians in Mariupol were civilians.

Before the war began on February 24, Anna Vorosheva was an event organizer, Stanislav Glushkov was an international truck driver, and Konstantin Velichko worked in IT.

After the full-scale invasion, they all began volunteering.

Konstantin evacuated women and children from Berdyansk and coordinated volunteer activities in Zaporizhzhia.

Anna helped residents of Mariupol and worked at a medical supply warehouse, while Stanislav worked at a volunteer center in Zaporizhzhia.

However, by the end of March, Russian occupiers did not let them through a checkpoint and “transferred” them through several detention facilities.

"At the last checkpoint in Mariupol, Russian soldiers, at gunpoint, forced us out of our vehicle and escorted us to Nikolskoye.

  Our van was marked with all the necessary signs; we had volunteer badges, documents, passports—everything needed to make it clear that we were civilians engaged in evacuation,” says Kostyantyn Velychko.

The Russian occupiers claimed that the drivers were transporting people for money, carrying Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers, and also giving their documents to soldiers of the Azov Regiment so that they could allegedly leave Mariupol.

“It was complete nonsense, but in the end, it led to us being thrown into a cell, and that’s how our journey to Colony No. 120 began,” he adds.

Before sending us to the penal colony, the occupiers took the volunteers to the so-called “Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime” in Donetsk.

“At almost every stage, we were transported blindfolded. They wrapped our eyes and hands with duct tape, put bags over our heads…

“If I sat incorrectly, they beat me on the legs; if I lowered my hands incorrectly, they beat me on the hands,” says Kostyantyn.

According to Konstantin, there were other detained Ukrainians in the cell with him: former military personnel and civilians.

Many of them were tortured with electricity by the occupiers.

"These guys told us that physical force was used against them. They (the occupiers—ed.) attached electrodes to their toes or laid the prisoners on a metal table, sprayed them with water, and applied an electric current,” says Konstantin.

 

"We could constantly hear the sounds of men being beaten"

"When we were brought to the prison grounds, a grim scene unfolded before us: abandoned grounds with several two-story concrete buildings. One of these buildings was called DIZO and served as a disciplinary isolation unit.

These buildings had not been in use since 2010 and were slated for demolition. This area was absolutely unsuitable for holding anyone, especially people,” says Anna Vorosheva.

The two-story building had 19 cells, which could hold no more than a hundred people.

The occupiers put prisoners to work on various tasks in the colony—one night, Anna was called in to conduct a “headcount” in the cells.

“That’s how I was able to get to the second floor of the disciplinary isolation unit and see with my own eyes that a cell designed to hold 10 people and measuring no more than 20 square meters was holding 55 men at the same time. They slept in shifts,” the volunteer recounts.

All the cells were overcrowded, but the number of prisoners was growing every day.

According to Anna, the building, which was designed to hold about 100 people, was holding up to 800 people at a time.

“The worst part was that you could constantly hear the sounds of men being beaten and their pleas to stop the torture,” says Anna Vorosheva.

At first, the captured volunteers were held in a detention cell that the guards called “the pit.”

There was no running water there, says Anna.

“The sewage system was set up so that everything accumulated in a drain pit, and it was always clogged. The first few weeks were especially horrific because we were forbidden from using the toilet, and that was a special kind of torture.

We were surrounded by filth, decay, and a bone-chilling cold,” the volunteer recounts.

Female prisoners were not given sanitary pads or other hygiene products.

“Some of us had to go through 3–4 menstrual cycles without these supplies. It was a form of torture—there’s no other way to describe it. It was impossible to beg for these items,” the woman recalls.

Many cells lacked boards to sleep on, so the captives had to sleep on the concrete floor.

“Drinking water was in particularly short supply. We could count on 150–200 ml of water per person per day. Sometimes we didn’t even get that much,” Anna says.

Industrial water was also in short supply.

"By the time we arrived at the colony, everyone was already in extreme conditions, and our health couldn’t withstand either the cold or the stress—everyone started getting sick.

You could hear coughing coming from every cell. But we had no medicine, no medical care, not a single pill—not even boiling water,” the woman recalls.

The volunteer also recalls the quality of the food in the “pit” with horror.

"The first thing I saw in terms of food was about 150 grams of gray bread and a dirty bowl, of which there weren’t enough either. Later on, food was brought only in dirty, used bowls containing overcooked pasta and tupka. It was a cold mush that we had to eat to survive."

The colony had a toilet designated for "workers," but it could also be used by people who served other prisoners, particularly those who delivered food.

"Once, the girls who were serving food reported that a Ukrainian flag had appeared on the floor of the toilet and the guards were forcing people to step on it. None of the prisoners did so."

However, according to Anna, they tried to force one of the women to step on the flag.

“She refused and was punished for it by being barred from going outside and suspended from work,” says the volunteer.

"They will tell our children and families that we have gone into space"

After two weeks in solitary confinement, Kostyantyn Velychko managed to learn from other prisoners that there are so-called barracks on the colony grounds where conditions are better than in solitary confinement.

"That is, you can breathe fresh air, you can lie down and sleep, rather than sleeping while sitting. At the first opportunity, we were able to ask an officer named Yakurnov, who was the head of the colony’s operations department, how we could get into these barracks,” says Konstantin.

A few days later, Yakurnov suggested bringing several laptops to the colony, since it was completely isolated.

“The colony’s warden, Sergei Vladimirovich Yevsyukov, was also involved in this—he did everything he could to facilitate it,” adds the released volunteer.

The prisoners were allowed to contact their families. In exchange for better living conditions, they had to pay money or hand over valuables.

“They let us make one, at most two, calls to our families. That’s how they found out for the first time in several weeks that we were alive and in the colony.

  They let us make a call; we had to explain where we were, that our conditions were terrible, and that money or valuables needed to be sent to the prison to improve our situation,” says Konstantin.

According to him, many of the captured volunteers were demanded to pay for building materials.

They had to repair the dilapidated barracks themselves just to be able to spend time outdoors.

"I want to emphasize once again the name and surname of the camp commander—Serhiy Volodymyrovych Yevsyukov. In my personal opinion, he is one of the most terrible torturers who runs this entire camp.

  He repeatedly told us that we would remain there for at least 10 years, that they would tell our children and families that we had gone into space or that we were military pilots who had died. “He constantly put pressure on us,” emphasizes Kostyantyn Velychko.

“At first, the guards and administration at the Olenivka colony were from the ORDO,” says Stanislav Glushkov.

However, two days before the arrival of Ukrainian soldiers from Azovstal—many of whom are currently being held in Olenivka—the Russian administration arrived.

“They raised the Russian flag. It was completely branded as a Russian prison,” the driver adds.

"Ten years is the shortest sentence we've seen"
According to Anna Vorosheva, she was held in several different cells during her entire time in captivity.

Both civilian and military women were imprisoned alongside her.

"I was with former police officers; at one point, I was in a cell with women who had come out of Azovstal—they were medics and cooks. I was with Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers.

There were women from all walks of life: pregnant women, mothers of young children, women whose contracts had expired, National Guard accountants, and completely civilian women,” Anna recalls.

Volunteers Konstantin and Stanislav were held together.

“We saw a lot of different people. There were musicians, former soldiers, farmers, active-duty soldiers. A lot of civilians,” adds Velychko.

Many people received “rulings” or “sentences” from the occupiers—this meant they were reclassified from “administratively detained” to “under investigative arrest.”

“Ten years is the shortest sentence we’ve seen. Ten, 15, 25, life imprisonment.

More than 500 people received ‘sentences’ and were sent to the Donetsk pretrial detention center,” says the volunteer.

When asked what was the hardest part of being held captive by the occupiers, Kostyantyn Velychko replied:

“We had to witness what these people were doing to prisoners of war… It was truly torture—worse than what was inflicted on us.

And the second thing was that we couldn’t do anything. We went on a mission to help, we were arrested, and here we are sitting in prison, doing nothing, while people are dying—that was probably the heaviest burden for me."

However, after some time, the volunteers began helping other prisoners in the colony.

They tried to share their food and belongings with the prisoners of war and other captives.

“We remained volunteers even inside the colony. We can’t escape that,” adds Hanna Vorosheva.

"They handed us the prosecutor's order and kicked us out."

When the occupiers took the drivers prisoner, they promised to return them within a month.

According to Russian protocols, for 30 days the captives were considered “administratively detained,” meaning they were undergoing “filtration.”

But when the so-called “filtration period” ended, the captives continued to be held in detention.

“They simply arrested us all over again…

It was an endless procedure, because they released us and then, two minutes later, forced us to sign the exact same protocol again,” says driver Stanislav Glushkov.

Then the captives realized that they were being charged with “terrorism,” for which they could face up to 20 years in prison in the ORDO.

"The first document we saw was an interrogation report from the Organized Crime Control Department, which they forced us to sign. Almost none of them had dates.

There were a lot of charges in the protocol, and we realized that these charges mainly involved terrorism. Allegedly, we had committed some terrorist acts on the territory of the ‘DPR’ (ORDO – ed.),” says Stanislav.

Eventually, following the intervention of many organizations, the occupiers suddenly began releasing the captives.

Some of the volunteers were released at the end of June, and others in early July.

One prisoner, Serhiy Tarasenko, was not released—he is still being held in Olenivka.

“They gave us a prosecutor’s order stating they had no claims against us and simply escorted us out the gate. At first, we didn’t believe it; we thought this was the next stage—transfer to another prison.

  When they let us out the gate, it took some time to adjust and realize that we were on the other side, outside the fence,” Stanislav recalls of his release.

To get home, we had to leave occupied Donetsk.

“Our country helped us with money for the move and recommended the safest route to evacuate from the uncontrolled territory of the so-called ‘DPR.’

Most of us traveled through Russia, then Latvia, Lithuania, and finally Warsaw,” says Kostyantyn Velychko.

  However, the work to secure his release is not yet complete, as many Ukrainians remain detained in the colony, including Serhiy Tarasenko.

“I would very much like for us to continue this effort together and help him regain his freedom,” the volunteer emphasizes.

This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.