By Olha Chepil | 2024-12-02

KYIV -- Rights activists are documenting a brutal system of repression orchestrated by Moscow in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory.

The Kremlin has created a stifling environment of fear where it violates international law daily, survivors of oppression and captivity say.

"This stream of torture, repression and the desire to wipe out Ukrainian identity in the territory seized by Russia is getting more and more intense," Anastasia Panteleyeva, director of the documentation department of the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), told Kontur.

The outside world knows little and rarely hears of the repression and torture because the territory controlled by Russia is virtually inaccessible to independent journalists, she said.

Rights activists gather all their information from interviews with survivors or from witnesses.

"We analyzed hundreds of testimonials by former captives, or we looked for their relatives or those who were swapped," Panteleyeva said. "Everyone says the same thing, that this is a planned policy, and the methods are similar and procedures identical in all the occupied regions."

Moscow's end goal is to destroy Ukrainian identity using tactics such as propaganda, reeducation, torture, compulsory Russian citizenship and sending children to live in Russia for good, say rights activists.

Surviving by a miracle

"I'm an Armenian who considers himself Ukrainian. I don't want the Russian world, but it came to me," said Azat Azatyan, a former resident of Berdyansk, a city in Zaporizhzhia province that is now occupied by the Russians .

Azatyan, a former construction worker, spent 43 days in Russian captivity.

Russian soldiers abducted him on July 6, 2022, in Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia province, because of his volunteer work. He handed out food at roadblocks and organized evacuation columns.

Among those he rescued were doctors, teachers and families of Ukrainian service members. Azatyan took almost 1,000 inhabitants out of occupied territory to Ukraine-controlled territory.

"On March 15, 2022, I started taking people out. Sometimes we would be shot at or we'd be held for days at checkpoints, but thank God, everyone lived," he told Kontur. "I drove [evacuees] for free as long as I could. But then someone turned me in to the Russians."

On July 6 that year, when he was returning from Zaporizhzhia, Russian forces stopped him at the last roadblock. They had his information.

They put a bag over his head and took him to a dark room to interrogate him, Azatyan said.

"One day they beat me so hard I couldn't walk for 12 days. I couldn't move," he said. "They broke my leg, the flesh separated from my bones, blood was streaming out of my ears and the electroshock torture perforated my membranes. My teeth came out."

Azatyan said prayer and thoughts of his wife and three children saved him from death.

After 43 days, because the Russians did not learn anything worthwhile from him, they released him and gave him a day to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory.

"I had surgery on my teeth and jaw here, and I'm lisping a little now, but things are already OK. I have problems in my leg," he said from Zaporizhzhia city, where he is living with his family.

"The doctors said it will get better with time," he added.

When Azatyan returned from Russian captivity, he opened 11 help centers for displaced persons, including children.

"The best way to go through rehabilitation is to start helping others," he said.

The Russian occupiers are holding more than 14,000 Ukrainian civilians prisoner, Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian commissioner for human rights, said July 9.

Seizing property

Ihor Kotelyanets, co-ordinator of the Association of Relatives of Political Prisoners of the Kremlin, is aware of dozens of forced disappearances, arrests and beatings in the occupied territory.

Residents told him about experiencing mounting pressure meant to force them to take Russian citizenship or to seize their property.

"There's a massive campaign to nationalize property going on now," Kotelyanets told Kontur. "Everything is being taken away; everything is being inventoried. We're seeing an influx of Russians in the occupied territories -- at least to Zaporizhzhia province, which we're documenting."

Holdouts in Russian-occupied territory say the only chance they have of surviving is not to go outside, he said. Russian troops occupy all the vacated houses.

"Someone from occupied territory told me that if you go outside, the streets are empty. There are only soldiers," Kotelyanets said. "The residents are afraid ... to show themselves."

"There's no electricity for days. ...There's no internet. There's nothing," he said.

Until August, Sumy province had a checkpoint through which civilians could still leave occupied territory, said Kotelyanets. It was the only one. But when the Ukrainian operation in Kursk province, Russia, started, the checkpoint shut down.

"Essentially the only way left to escape from this territory is through third countries," Kotelyanets said. "[Locals] are afraid. They ended up in the occupation face to face with the enemy. And if they have a difference of opinion, the occupiers can simply take them from their homes to be interrogated."

Helping others

The MIHR put together a map of more than 100 detention facilities in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.

"We created an online map where we put every place where [Ukrainians] are detained, where they're beaten and interrogated," said Panteleyeva. "Whenever someone [we interview] mentions a new detention facility in occupied territory, we mark it on the map."

Olena Yagupova was arrested at her house in Zaporizhzhia province on October 6, 2022, allegedly because her husband serves in the Ukrainian army.

She spent six months in Russian captivity.

"All the odds were against me for returning from there," Yagupova told Kontur.

"It was a nightmare. They put a bag over my head and hit me over the head. They wound tape around my neck so I couldn't get any air. The wounds on my head were so big that blood ran all over my back, all the way down to my waist," she remembered.

She said the Russians threatened to rape her, and they forced her and other civilian captives to dig military trenches.

"There were times when we dug until 4am," Yagupova said. "The riflemen would shine lights. [Prisoners'] fingers were bent permanently, but they were forced to dig."

After subjecting Yagupova to long torture sessions and slave labor, the Russians released her on March 16, 2023. Her house is still in occupied territory, and two rotations of Kadyrovites -- troops of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov -- have lived in it and stolen everything.

They left only the walls, and they shot her dogs, said Yagupova.