Electrocuted, hanged on the bars: 14-year-old teenager tells about horrors of Russian torture chamber in Kherson region
A resident of the village of Kyselivka, Kherson region, 14-year-old Vitaliy spent 10 days in captivity of the Russian occupiers. The teenager witnessed and experienced brutal beatings and torture.
Vitaliy shared his memories of the hell of the Russian torture chamber with Radio Liberty journalists.
The Russian military abducted the teenager and his uncle from his native village because they found correspondence with the Armed Forces of Ukraine in his phone. Vitaliy and his uncle went to get medicine, went to the highway, and a car with the invaders stopped there. They demanded the phone and found correspondence in the gadget.
– They blindfolded us, threw a bag over our heads, tied our hands with cigarette butts. They brought us to some basement. There were 13 of us there, – the 14-year-old boy recalled.
The teenager was held for 10 days together with other prisoners in a Russian torture chamber in the basement of the Kherson Court of Appeal.
– There they play “Russian roulette”, beat with electric shocks, hang on the bars. When a person has a heart attack and hangs on the bars, they just take him off and throw him into the cell. If you want – you will survive, if not – you will not survive. They took me to the corridor and beat me there,” Vitaliy said.
He added that the occupiers also electrocuted him and interrogated him about weapons and telephone correspondence.
Vitaliy’s parents were looking for their son in the region and Kherson. Immediately after the disappearance of the boy, his father Oleg went to the Russian checkpoint, and there the occupiers told him that the detainees allegedly surrendered the positions of the Russian troops.
– They (the occupiers – Ed.) said: They confessed to everything, that they surrendered positions to the Armed Forces of Ukraine and how much equipment came in. I start shouting: Where is the evidence why you took a minor disabled child without the parents’ knowledge? A “Kadyrovite” came out and said: If you continue to be so “naughty”, I will shoot you right here, – Vitaliy’s father recalled.
Then the man appealed to the commander of the unit based in the village. He arranged an interrogation, saying that the fate of the boy “depends on the answers”, and checked the phone.
The family survived terrible days, not knowing the fate of their son.
– You eat and think – did the children eat there or not? Are they alive or not alive? Maybe they are already gone. We tried to hope for the best, that they would return, – Vitaliy’s mother shared her memories.
Finally, the occupants released the boy, and his parents took him.
Recently, the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights Dmytro Lubinets informed that the Russian occupiers create torture chambers for children in the occupied territories. Such cameras, in particular, were found in liberated Kherson.
