Russian occupiers utilized Ukrainian prisoners of war for the exhumation of civilian bodies belonging to those killed during the fighting in Mariupol in the spring of 2022, Serhiy Hrytsiv, a marine recently released from captivity, told Slidstvo.Info.
For an entire month, at 4:00 a.m., captives were transported from the Olenivka penal colony to the destroyed city, where they excavated mass graves and pulled bodies from beneath the rubble.
According to Hrytsiv, the prisoners dug up approximately 800 bodies and witnessed looting by Russian guards. Later, these same prisoners of war were tortured and tried on fabricated charges. Serhiy Hrytsiv himself received a 25-year prison sentence.
PRISONERS OF WAR FORCED TO EXHUME MARIUPOL RESIDENTS
The Russians destroyed and occupied Mariupol four years ago. On the sites of demolished homes, under whose ruins people remained, new housing is now being built—but not for the residents of Mariupol. No one is systematically searching for the bodies of the deceased city dwellers, except for their relatives.
Ukrainian prisoners of war were involved in the exhumation of civilians. One of them was marine Serhiy Hrytsiv, who was held in the Olenivka penal colony. In the spring of 2022, he and other captives were taken to the ruined city of Mariupol every day at 4:00 a.m.
“They took us out at four or five in the morning. We were divided into groups of five. In four weeks, we dug up approximately 800 civilians,” Serhiy says.
According to him, bodies were pulled from the rubble of destroyed homes, from yards, gardens, and makeshift burial sites. Among the dead were children and the elderly—many had died from shelling, hunger, cold, or the lack of medical care during the siege of the city.
“There were many torn bodies after the shelling. We tried to dig it all up. But sometimes you simply could not reach them with your hands, and the occupiers were reluctant to involve machinery. For example, we had information that an entire family should be under the rubble of a house, but we found the body of only one woman; the rest remained under the concrete slabs. A week passed, and we saw heavy machinery already bulldozing that house,” the former prisoner adds.
The prisoners were also taken to the Staryi Krym cemetery, where civilians had already been buried. There, they saw relatives of the deceased who were against repeated exhumations. Investigators told the relatives that these burials occurred under Ukrainian authority and they needed to check whether the civilians had been murdered. As the bodies were pulled out, the occupiers assigned numbers to the deceased, and documents were often thrown back into the dug-out trench.
“We saw how the guards divided money and valuables among themselves that they found during the exhumation,” Serhiy Hrytsiv recalls.
The bodies were placed in black bags, assigned numbers, and taken to an improvised morgue set up in the parking lot of a Metro supermarket.
As journalists from Slidstvo.Info discovered from exclusive documents obtained from people searching for their relatives, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation officially admits that the bodies of civilians killed in Mariupol were “lost,” and burial sites were not always recorded. Investigators still send the relatives of the missing refusals to open criminal cases or inform them that information about their loved ones is absent from the morgue databases.
“TODAY YOU ARE A WITNESS, TOMORROW THE DEFENDANT”
After their participation in the exhumations, Russian security forces began using Ukrainian prisoners as subjects in fabricated criminal cases. According to Serhiy Hrytsiv, he and other captives were subjected to torture and forced to sign so-called “heartfelt confessions” for the murders of civilian residents of Mariupol.
“If you did not want to sign the ‘heartfelt confession,’ the guards would lock you in a punishment cell. Sooner or later, after three months, when your health is already at the limit, you sign,” Hrytsiv says.
Serhiy Hrytsiv appeared in a video released to the public by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation featuring Ukrainian prisoners of war who allegedly “confess” to crimes in Mariupol. He is asked to introduce himself and state what he is accused of; he says, “For executing a criminal order.” In his conversation with journalists, he explains: “A long preparation procedure precedes this recording. And if a prisoner’s face looks intact, that does not mean that everything below the neck, remaining under the clothes, is not purple.”
According to him, the court proceedings were a formality. One lawyer was assigned to four defendants. On one occasion, a lawyer sat for five minutes during a hearing, received a phone call, and left. Most sessions were conducted online. Other prisoners of war often became witnesses in the cases.
“The absurdity is that those witnesses later became defendants with sentences. It was a cycle. Today you are in the dock, and I am a witness; tomorrow, it is the other way around,” Serhiy says.
The Russians sentenced Serhiy Hrytsiv to 27 years in prison on fabricated charges of terrorism and extremism. Through an appeal, it was reduced to 25 years. Serhiy spent two and a half years in captivity and survived numerous tortures: electric shocks to the genitals, being hung by his legs, a bag of bleach over his head, pulled-out fingernails, and broken ribs. During transfers and before the exchange, all copies of the sentences were confiscated from the prisoners.
“If one were to read what is written in the ‘sentences,’ it is absurd. The Russians will not allow that. And our words are just words. There is no evidence base,” Serhiy says.
Four years after the occupation of Mariupol, the families of the deceased still do not know where their loved ones are buried, and the exact number of victims remains unknown. While people are sent formal brush-offs, Russian investigators fabricate sentences for Ukrainian soldiers, accusing them of murdering “unidentified” civilians.
