Lack of food for several days in a row, daily beatings with various torture instruments, dogs being set loose on prisoners, and festering wounds – these are the harsh realities faced by Ukrainian prisoners of war held in Correctional Colony No. 9 in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh Oblast, Russia, near the border with Kharkiv Oblast. During the April 2024 exchange of bodies between Ukraine and Russia, the remains of soldier Volodymyr Mishchenko, who died in captivity, were returned home. Ukrainian forensic experts determined that he suffered from cachexia (severe body wasting with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy – note) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
Despite these grim conditions, the detention facility has received little media attention. According to information obtained by Slidstvo.Info from the Prosecutor General’s Office, only 16 prisoners have been returned from this facility since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Slidstvo.Info journalists talked to the wife of a soldier who died in captivity and a soldier who spent about one year in the same cell with him to tell more about yet another torture facility in Russia, where Ukrainian soldiers are kept in the cold and almost without food.
“START A NEW LIFE, AND I WILL DEFINITELY FIND YOU”
Volodymyr Mishchenko hailed from Donetsk Oblast. Before the full-scale war, he and his family lived in Myrnohrad. Volodymyr had been in the army since 2017. In 2020, after the end of his contract, he returned to work at the mine for one year, but later resumed his service. He was a driver/paramedic at a hospital in Pokrovsk. In January 2022, Volodymyr Mishchenko was sent on a business trip to Mariupol. He was supposed to replace a colleague who had gone on vacation for just one month, Volodymyr’s wife, Viktoriya Mishchenko, told Slidstvo.Info.
“On the morning of the 24th, he woke me up and said that it had all started. Around 9-10 a.m., he called me and said that 20 wounded had been brought to the hospital from the left bank… On the morning of the 26th, he called me and said: ‘Vika, there are no ways out of Mariupol: no railroad, no bus, nothing. Pick up the kids and leave; I don’t want my children to stay in the basement like [we do] here’,” the woman recalls.
Volodymyr Mishchenko with his family before the full-scale invasion
Viktoriya obeyed her husband, packed her belongings within a few hours, and left with her children. Her husband still tried to contact his family, but these were short conversations. Someone on the other end of the phone would shout “aviation” in the middle of the conversation, and the connection would be interrupted.
The last time Volodymyr called his wife was on March 10.
“He said: ‘Start a new life, and I will definitely find you’,” Viktoriya recalls.
“NOT EVERYONE WOULD BE ABLE TO LOAD BODIES AND TAKE THEM TO THE MORGUE”
In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Volodymyr traveled around Mariupol collecting medicines and food for the wounded and medics in the military hospital, and later began transporting bodies of dead soldiers and civilians to the morgue, a soldier named Serhiy, call sign “Kasper”, told Slidstvo.info. He was the commander of the economic department in the hospital and Volodymyr’s direct commander.
Serhiy “Kasper”, commander of the economic department in the hospital (pictured left)
“He was a good guy. He did all his work, without conceit, without anything [like that]. Not everyone would be able to load bodies into bags and take them to the morgue. He had nerves of iron,” says Kasper.
According to Serhiy, sometime in early March (he does not remember the exact date), Volodymyr and others temporarily assigned to the Mariupol hospital decided to try to leave the city. Serhiy hasn’t heard from him since.
“LETTERS DID NOT REACH THE CAPTIVES”
On March 23, 2022, Viktoriya received a call from her neighbors. They said that they had seen a video with Ukrainians in captivity, and her husband was there. The woman found another video in May. Until the end of the summer, these videos were the only information about Volodymyr. There was no contact with him. At the end of August, Viktoriya received a letter – a boilerplate, but nonetheless confirmation that her husband was alive.
“They are feeding us, treating us well. Take care of the children, wait for me, and I will definitely find you,” the letter read.
Volodymyr Mishchenko with his children before the full-scale invasion
Viktoriya also wrote letters to Volodymyr, but they did not reach him. Later, when returning from captivity, the soldiers who saw Volodymyr in prison told her about this.
In 2023, there were only two pieces of news about her husband from the Red Cross. Both times, the organization’s representatives called Viktoriya and confirmed that, according to their information, Volodymyr Mishchenko was in captivity. However, nothing more was known about Volodymyr’s condition or his whereabouts.
“HE HOLDS ON AND SUPPORTS OTHERS”
In February 2024, a military man, also Volodymyr, contacted Viktoriya. He had spent about one year in the same cell as her husband.
“He told me that my husband was in Borisoglebsk, that he was holding on and supporting others. And I realized that he was talking about my husband because that’s exactly how it had been all his life,” Viktoriya recalls.
Volodymyr Mishchenko before the full-scale invasion
After receiving this news, Viktoriya was restless, finally knowing where her husband was being held.
“I was ready to go there. I understood that I had two children, that no one would let me in, that it was probably a one-way journey, and then who would take care of the children… I understood all this, but I couldn’t calm down,” recalls Viktoriya Mishchenko.
“IN AN ADJACENT CELL, A HUMAN ROTTED TO DEATH. THEY TOLD HIM: ‘MOAN SO THAT WE KNOW WHEN YOU DIE’”
Volodymyr Miroshnychenko, a soldier of the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, who called Viktoriya with news about her husband, was held captive for 1 year and 10 months – all the time in Borisoglebsk, first in SIZO No. 2 remand prison, and later in solitary confinement of penal colony No. 9. For about a year, he shared a cell with Volodymyr Mishchenko, Viktoriya’s husband. However, about six months before his release, they were separated into different cells.
A photo of Volodymyr Miroshnychenko taken before his capture
When Miroshnychenko saw Mishchenko, he had lost about 40 kilograms of his usual weight.
“He could walk, he had no wounds, nothing like that. He told me that he had weighed over 100 kilograms there. But when we were weighed, he was already 63. The food was terrible. Just water and a couple of potatoes floating around. Sometimes they wouldn’t let us eat for a couple of days,” Volodymyr Miroshnychenko recalls.
In addition, the prisoners were beaten daily: in the morning and in the evening. This did not depend on their rank or the length of their imprisonment.
“There were rotations: sometimes Chechens would come, sometimes Buryats. It was terrifying. One prisoner rotted alive, another had a knife shoved into his mouth, slicing his cheek open, and another had pepper spray forced into his mouth. They made some guys sit on a stick,” recalls Miroshnychenko, lighting a cigarette.
Dogs could be set loose at any moment because canine handlers were always present during interrogations, as if it were procedure, he says. One man was severely bitten, and his wounds started to fester.
“I didn’t see him with my own eyes because he was in the adjacent cell, but we heard everything, including when they carried him out after he died. Before he died, when he was in really bad shape, the guards would tell him, ‘Moan until you bite the dust so we know when you croak’,” recalls the soldier.
They could hear everything: the suffering of prisoners in nearby cells, the beatings, and the people being taken for interrogations.
The captives weren’t allowed to look at the guards, only at their feet. Raising their heads was also forbidden, even during the rare walks. However, based on the voices around them and what they managed to see during walks and on the way to interrogations, Volodymyr estimated that around 100 people were being held in solitary confinement.
According to information provided to Slidstvo.Info by the Office of the Prosecutor General, 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war were held in Borisoglebsk Correctional Colony No. 9 of the Federal Penitentiary Service in Voronezh Oblast, and were later returned through an exchange.
“After the interrogations, my body [was the color] of this sweater (during the interview, Volodymyr is wearing a grey-blue sweatshirt — ed.). I had never seen anything like it before. We even had to help each other onto the beds because we couldn’t climb up ourselves. Some guys had to stand while using the toilet because they couldn’t sit down,” says Volodymyr.
They were interrogated by FSB representatives. Volodymyr says they mentioned which agency they were from, but they didn’t give any names or call signs.
A photo of Volodymyr Miroshnychenko taken before his capture
“I strongly believed that we would be exchanged. Every day, I hoped that they would wake us up at night and take us for the exchange. We supported each other in there because some wanted to suffocate themselves, hang themselves, or cut their veins. They (the Russians – ed.) even slipped us blades themselves,” says Volodymyr.
On January 31, 2024, he was exchanged.
“CACHEXIA AND BILATERAL PURULENT BRONCHOPNEUMONIA”
In the summer of 2024, Viktoriya received a call from an investigator who told her that her husband’s body had probably been returned to Ukraine and that she needed to come to Vinnytsia for a second DNA test and identification.
“I did not go to the identification, I did not see him. His brother and cousin were there. They said the body was recognizable. I also have documents with diagnoses and photos of the body, but I don’t take them out, I don’t have the strength to see them,” says the wife of Volodymyr Mishchenko, who died in captivity.
Volodymyr’s wife shared with Slidstvo.Info journalists the report of the examination of her husband’s body. The conclusion of forensic experts: Volodymyr Mishchenko died in captivity due to cachexia (severe body exhaustion with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy – ed.) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
“He always weighed more than 100 kilograms. Even when he was just under 100, he seemed thin, because he was 1 meter 90 centimeters tall. He probably lacked both food and vitamins…” his wife says.
“WE CAN CONCLUDE THAT THE ACTIONS OF THE RUSSIAN AUTHORITIES ARE PURPOSEFUL AND SYSTEMATIC”
Starving captives to death is one of the practices of the Russians with Ukrainian prisoners of war. Soldier Serhiy with the call sign “Kasper,” a commander of Volodymyr Mishchenko, also spoke about the terrible food, which caused many to lose about half their weight. From Mariupol, he first ended up in Olenivka (colony No. 120 in occupied Olenivka, where an explosion occurred on July 28, 2022. More than 50 soldiers of the Azov Regiment were killed and more than 70 others were seriously injured – note), and then in a pre-trial detention center in the town of Kineshma, Ivanovo Oblast, 400 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
“The food was just dreadful. There was a period when we barely got two small cups of food a day—just 0.3 liters each. They beat the muscles in our legs, set dogs on us, and shocked us with stun guns. That was the beauty of life in a Russian prison. They used us for practice during interrogations; they even said so themselves. They tested new models of stun guns or batons to see what was more ‘effective’ and what the consequences would be,” recalls Serhiy.
“But even outside of interrogations, you could get shocked at any moment,” the soldier explains. “We were forced to memorize a list of names from what they called the ‘Alley of Angels.’ It’s a memorial with the names of ‘children of Donbas who died during the war.’ The guards could approach us with the list at any time, give a number, and you had to say the name. If you couldn’t, they shocked you.”
In this same pre-trial detention center, according to Serhiy, around 250 people were held before he was exchanged.
Serhiy “Kasper” during his release from captivity (pictured left). The man lost 40 kg of weight
“Given the wide geographical distribution of detention facilities where torture was inflicted on prisoners of war, the similar methods of physical and psychological abuse, and the identical motives behind the torture (including those based on national and linguistic discrimination), we can conclude that the actions of Russian officials are deliberate and systematic,” Taras Semkiv, Deputy Head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in Armed Conflict at the Prosecutor General’s Office, said in a comment to Slidstvo.Info journalists.
“As of now, according to information provided to journalists by the Office of the Prosecutor General, 2,836 returned Ukrainian prisoners of war have been recognized as victims of torture in Russian captivity. In total, according to Defense Intelligence, Ukraine has already brought home around 4,000 of its citizens.”
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