They are torturing Ukrainians: in several communities of the left-bank Kherson region, the Russians have created new torture chambers

The Russians exert pressure on the civilian population in the temporarily captured territories of the left bank of the Kherson Region by all means and forces. They set up torture chambers where they detain and subject local residents to torture for their pro-Ukrainian position or try to force them to cooperate in this way.

At the beginning of April 2024, it became known that the Russians had set up one of these torture chambers in the cultural center of the Odradivka village of the Novotroit community of the Genichesky district. There they keep illegally deprived civilians, in particular, residents of Kakhovsky district. This was reported by the Center for Journalistic Investigations, based on its own sources. Local residents also confirmed this information.

“I know that in our cultural center in Odradivka there is a basement to which the Russian military takes “unfortunate” people. They are being tortured there. The Russians have repeatedly threatened to send other people there to the basement if they don’t like something,” the interlocutors of the Center for Investigative Journalism in the Occupation told.

However, this is far from the only torture chamber operating on the territory of the temporarily occupied territories of the Kherson Region. As the Chairman of the Board of the Crimean Tatar Resource Center, Eskander Bariev, noted, it is currently known that such places of deprivation of liberty exist in several districts of the region: “The Russians have set up two torture chambers in the Skadovsky district, there is one in the Genichesk district – in Genichesk itself, on the basis of the 14th school, they made torture chamber We have repeatedly written and talked about the fact that they are torturing people there, and mass gathering up to 300 people and “re-educating”. They did this in 2022-2023. There are people who went through this “re-education”, let’s say, but then left because it was dangerous. There is information that on the grounds of the school in the village of Velyki Kopani, Kherson region, there are also torture chambers, in the basement of the school FSB units conduct interrogations and keep them in such harsh, inhumane conditions. In addition, in Nova Kakhovka, on the basis of the 17th school, a torture chamber was also created in the basement, and there, too, they gathered people en masse and carried out torture.”

Bariyev added, there are similar torture chambers in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region, in particular in Energodar. According to him, citizens with a pro-Ukrainian position, as well as those who do not want to comply with the demands of the local occupation authorities, are subjected to severe torture there.