Rape, electric shocks to the genitals, and threats of castration: what four Ukrainian men endured during the Russian occupation
Source: Slidstvo.Info
Authors: Yana Korniychuk, Anna Babinets, Ilya Lozovsky (OCCRP)
A priest. A system administrator. A coffee shop owner. A former police officer. All four were detained by Russian military personnel during the occupation of Kherson in the first year of the war.
This is detailed in the Slidstvo.Info documentary “He, Too: Stories of Ukrainian Men Wronged by the Russians.”
“THEY PUSHED ME DOWN ON THE TABLE AND STRETCHED ME OUT”
Before the interrogation, Russian soldiers promised Viktor Soldatov that he would return home very soon. He was released nine months later; while being held in Russian torture chambers, he attempted to take his own life.
“They threw me onto a table and spread me out,” Viktor recalls: “Four of them held me down—two by my arms, two by my legs. They pulled down my shorts and started hitting me on the buttocks with a rubber baton or something else. I was already in such a dazed state; I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.”
Russian soldiers threatened him: “Do you know what we’re going to do to you? We’ll do it all together, and each of us separately.” Viktor adds that at that moment, he nearly went mad from what was happening to him.
Soldatov, a systems administrator at a shipyard in Kherson, was detained in August 2022, a few months after the Russians occupied the city.
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He never fully understood why he was detained. The man says his tormentors were more interested in torture than in obtaining information.
“They weren’t interested in my answers to their questions,” says Viktor: “No matter what I answered, it didn’t affect the outcome. They were interested in the process itself.”
Viktor Soldatov is one of four men whom journalists from “Slidstvo.Info” managed to speak with. During the occupation of Kherson, they were held in torture chambers for taking a proactive pro-Ukrainian stance. To force the men to cooperate and break them psychologically, the Russians used sexual violence, raping them or threatening them with rape.
Viktor Soldatov, a survivor of sexual violence in a Kherson
torture chamber The men’s stories differ in many ways: one was held in a torture chamber for a day, while others were held for months. One man was released after his wife paid a ransom for his freedom; another spent months in Russian prisons before being released as part of a prisoner exchange.
But their experiences are united by the brutality with which they were treated. All four men described brutal torture, during which the Russians subjected them to various forms of violence, beatings, and waterboarding. All four faced sexual violence, including electric shocks to their genitals, penetration with foreign objects, and threats of castration.
“They’re lying to everyone when they say that nothing happens to the people who end up in their detention centers,” says Serhiy Chudinovich, a priest who was detained and tortured in March 2022. “I am taking this opportunity to inform the public that when they say their (Russian—ed.) screening measures do not involve violence—they do. And I can attest to that. This information comes straight from me. I am the source. Let people know. I want them to know this,” adds Serhiy.
According to information from Ukrainian prosecutors provided to “Slidstvo.Info,” over the course of more than two years of the Russian-Ukrainian war, 280 cases of sexual violence (179 involving women, 101 involving men) committed by Russian military personnel have been documented. These include rape, mutilation or violence against the genitals, forced exposure, threats, and attempted rape, as well as forcing victims to watch the sexual abuse of their loved ones.
“Sexual violence is a tool that allows them to achieve their goals. And for those who have survived this, it will be painful to talk about, and they will say as little as possible,” says Ihor Demyanyuk, head of the war crimes investigation unit of the Kherson police.
“OF COURSE, I SCREAM”
Chudynovych, a priest, has always been an activist. According to him, in 1990—when he was a teenager and Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union—he was arrested for hanging blue-and-yellow flags around his hometown.
When Kherson was seized by Russian occupiers in 2022, Chudynovych’s parish in Kherson became a symbol of resilience. He set up a barbershop, a coffee shop, and a medical clinic inside the church—almost nothing was functioning in the city at the time, and people came to receive food, medicine, fuel, and other necessities.
“I didn’t have any weapons in the church, and I couldn’t have had any to begin with. But we were doing things that they (the occupiers—ed.) already consider dangerous… Why are we dangerous? A Ukrainian priest is motivating a Ukrainian soldier,” the man says.
The Russians detained Serhiy in the morning at the church gates. From what other people have said, the man knows that he was detained by the “new police.” “For a 40-minute conversation,” they replied to parishioners when asked where they were taking the priest. The Russians put a hood over the priest’s head to cover his eyes and took him to the police station on Lutheran Street in Kherson.
Serhiy Chudinovich, a priest who was tortured by Russian soldiers in Kherson
At first, the occupiers did not treat the priest too harshly, trying to persuade him to cooperate.
“Isn’t it good to do good?” the Russian soldiers asked Serhiy. “How can I, a priest and a Christian, say that doing good isn’t a good thing? I said that, of course, it’s good… They said, ‘Let’s record a video—we have to do good; people are hungry,’” Serhiy recalls.
“I nodded,” he says, “but I didn’t agree. I went ahead and said this: ‘Even if I record a video like that, no one will believe me.’” After that, everything got more brutal.”
“I ask for water—they give me vodka. It’s a five-liter jug; they shove it right under my hat, where my mouth is, and pour the liquid in. I thought it was water, but it was vodka. Not even vodka—it was diluted alcohol,” the priest recounts.
When the man again refused to cooperate, the Russians stripped him.
“I’m standing there naked. They take a baton and try to shove it into my anus. Of course, I’m screaming. Everything is flowing out of me: nasal discharge, saliva, tears,” Chudinovich continues.
“They nearly tore a part of my body apart when one of them managed to say, ‘Will you sign the cooperation agreement?’” the priest recounts. “I tell them, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll sign it.’”
Before releasing him, the Russians recorded a propaganda video with Chudinovich, forcing him to say that he had not been subjected to any physical or psychological pressure.
Chudynovych was held in the Kherson torture chamber for only one day, but the memories of that experience still haunt him: “If I hear Russian spoken now, my heart starts racing.”
The priest did not begin cooperating with the Russian occupiers, as he had promised. After he was released, he left occupied Kherson by car.
The Main Directorate of the National Police, where Volodymyr, Serhiy, and Viktor
were held “THEY BROKE ME MORALLY”
Oleg, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, was held in a Kherson torture chamber for 17 days.
Like Chudinovich, he drew the Russians’ attention with his pro-Ukrainian stance. As the owner of a local café, he provided water to protesters demonstrating against the occupying forces. One day, the Russians detained Oleg near his own café and immediately began beating him.
“I shouted at them… I really didn’t know anyone,” the man says. “I begged them to let me go home because I have a small child. And I asked them to take my car as ransom for my release.”
At the same time, Russian soldiers threatened Oleg. “They said they would rape my wife in front of me if I didn’t name the organizers of the rally. And they’d throw my little son (who was 3 months old at the time—ed.) into the Dnipro River or send him to an orphanage in Russia.”
Oleg says that one day they tortured him for an hour and a half by applying an electric current to his genitals.
“They (the Russians—ed.) didn’t ask any questions; they just tortured me,” says Oleg. “Then they threw me off the chair. They laid me on the table, still naked. They called another one of their torturers into the room, whom they called ‘The Pervert.’ He stormed into the room. Very eccentric, very rude.”
“He immediately started hurling insults, hitting me on the back and buttocks, calling me his whore,” Oleg continues. “His slut.” He tried to rape me. He rubbed his genitals against my buttocks from behind for a long time. He tried to grope me. All of this was accompanied by laughter from everyone present. He tried for about 15 minutes, then got angry that he couldn’t do it, and started kicking me—on my buttocks, on my genitals—accompanying it with the words: ‘I can’t fuck this black ass.’ “My whole body down there was completely covered in black bruises.”
The man says that then the same soldier got angry, grabbed a ballpoint pen from the nightstand, shoved it into his anus, and rammed the pen in with his foot. After that, Oleg was thrown off the table and dragged back into the cell.
“Two minutes later, a Buryat man—who usually handled the beatings for them—ran in and, screaming in disgust, pulled the pen out. Apparently, they were afraid that I might hurt myself with that pen,” the victim continues.
The man says this was the turning point of the torture: “I tried to endure it, but after that, I was mentally broken.”
On the seventeenth day of his detention in the Kherson torture chamber, the man was released. Following advice from acquaintances, Oleg’s wife paid the Russians 100,000 hryvnias to secure his release. He was also forced to record a propaganda video before his release.
The man cites several reasons why he decided to share his story. First, he says, he wants those responsible to be punished. Second, he wants the world to know what is happening under Russian occupation.
“Another reason why I’m speaking openly and in detail about what happened to me is that I want others who have gone through similar experiences to also speak up and not remain silent. Because that makes our voices stronger,” Oleg states.
A room at the Kherson police station at 4 Lyuteranska Street.
“IT HAPPENED ALMOST EVERY DAY”
Volodymyr, who chose not to reveal his real name, spent months in Russian captivity.
Along with many others, Volodymyr joined the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces on the day of the invasion. He hid weapons and monitored the movements of Russian troops from underground before he was taken prisoner.
It is still difficult for him to recall what the Russians did to him. He was abducted on the street and taken to a torture chamber, where interrogations and torture awaited him.
“During the interrogation, they (the Russians—ed.) used some kind of pliers or something similar,” the man says. — “They clamped down on my genitals, threatening to cut them off. They threatened to use a baton to sexually assault me in an unnatural way.”
A month later, Volodymyr was sent to Russian-occupied Crimea, then to the Russian city of Voronezh, and a little while later, back to Volodymyr. According to him, in addition to regular beatings and threats, the topic of sexual violence was ever-present.
“They constantly threatened us with sexual violence of their own. That is, that they would rape me, force me to perform oral sex, or rape me with pens or rubber batons,” Vladimir says. — “It was actually so widespread that it happened almost every day.”
When asked why, in his opinion, they treated him this way, Volodymyr replies, “That’s how they tried to intimidate us,” and also explains the torture as stemming from a culture that recognizes only power and violence.
“Countries with such values, where to prove how ‘tough’ you are, you have to show that you can coerce a defenseless person of the same sex into a same-sex relationship. It’s one big Gulag. One big prison with the corresponding mindset,” Volodymyr reflects.
“This is Russia,” the man says. “What else is there to say?”
THE RIGHT TO THE TRUTH
Anton Drobovich, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, emphasizes the importance of investigating Russia’s war crimes, even if the prospect of restoring justice seems distant.
“Specific cases involving specific individuals must be investigated. The perpetrators must be found and brought to justice. This is an important part of restoring justice and a person’s dignity—it is the right to the truth,” the historian asserts.
Thanks to Oleg’s testimony, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office identified several Russian military personnel suspected of participating in his mistreatment.
When journalists from “Slidstvo.Info” called both Russians, they denied any involvement in the torture and hung up.
If you’d prefer to watch the video with subtitles in another language, go to YouTube Settings → Subtitles → Auto-translate and select the language of your choice.
Authors: Yana Korniychuk, Anna Babinets, Ilya Lozovsky (OCCRP)
A priest. A system administrator. A coffee shop owner. A former police officer. All four were detained by Russian military personnel during the occupation of Kherson in the first year of the war.
This is detailed in the Slidstvo.Info documentary “He, Too: Stories of Ukrainian Men Wronged by the Russians.”
“THEY PUSHED ME DOWN ON THE TABLE AND STRETCHED ME OUT”
Before the interrogation, Russian soldiers promised Viktor Soldatov that he would return home very soon. He was released nine months later; while being held in Russian torture chambers, he attempted to take his own life.
“They threw me onto a table and spread me out,” Viktor recalls: “Four of them held me down—two by my arms, two by my legs. They pulled down my shorts and started hitting me on the buttocks with a rubber baton or something else. I was already in such a dazed state; I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.”
Russian soldiers threatened him: “Do you know what we’re going to do to you? We’ll do it all together, and each of us separately.” Viktor adds that at that moment, he nearly went mad from what was happening to him.
Soldatov, a systems administrator at a shipyard in Kherson, was detained in August 2022, a few months after the Russians occupied the city.
We’re turning taboo topics into ones that society talks about. Join our “Investigation Club” and help us bring these issues to light!
He never fully understood why he was detained. The man says his tormentors were more interested in torture than in obtaining information.
“They weren’t interested in my answers to their questions,” says Viktor: “No matter what I answered, it didn’t affect the outcome. They were interested in the process itself.”
Viktor Soldatov is one of four men whom journalists from “Slidstvo.Info” managed to speak with. During the occupation of Kherson, they were held in torture chambers for taking a proactive pro-Ukrainian stance. To force the men to cooperate and break them psychologically, the Russians used sexual violence, raping them or threatening them with rape.
Viktor Soldatov, a survivor of sexual violence in a Kherson
torture chamber The men’s stories differ in many ways: one was held in a torture chamber for a day, while others were held for months. One man was released after his wife paid a ransom for his freedom; another spent months in Russian prisons before being released as part of a prisoner exchange.
But their experiences are united by the brutality with which they were treated. All four men described brutal torture, during which the Russians subjected them to various forms of violence, beatings, and waterboarding. All four faced sexual violence, including electric shocks to their genitals, penetration with foreign objects, and threats of castration.
“They’re lying to everyone when they say that nothing happens to the people who end up in their detention centers,” says Serhiy Chudinovich, a priest who was detained and tortured in March 2022. “I am taking this opportunity to inform the public that when they say their (Russian—ed.) screening measures do not involve violence—they do. And I can attest to that. This information comes straight from me. I am the source. Let people know. I want them to know this,” adds Serhiy.
According to information from Ukrainian prosecutors provided to “Slidstvo.Info,” over the course of more than two years of the Russian-Ukrainian war, 280 cases of sexual violence (179 involving women, 101 involving men) committed by Russian military personnel have been documented. These include rape, mutilation or violence against the genitals, forced exposure, threats, and attempted rape, as well as forcing victims to watch the sexual abuse of their loved ones.
“Sexual violence is a tool that allows them to achieve their goals. And for those who have survived this, it will be painful to talk about, and they will say as little as possible,” says Ihor Demyanyuk, head of the war crimes investigation unit of the Kherson police.
“OF COURSE, I SCREAM”
Chudynovych, a priest, has always been an activist. According to him, in 1990—when he was a teenager and Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union—he was arrested for hanging blue-and-yellow flags around his hometown.
When Kherson was seized by Russian occupiers in 2022, Chudynovych’s parish in Kherson became a symbol of resilience. He set up a barbershop, a coffee shop, and a medical clinic inside the church—almost nothing was functioning in the city at the time, and people came to receive food, medicine, fuel, and other necessities.
“I didn’t have any weapons in the church, and I couldn’t have had any to begin with. But we were doing things that they (the occupiers—ed.) already consider dangerous… Why are we dangerous? A Ukrainian priest is motivating a Ukrainian soldier,” the man says.
The Russians detained Serhiy in the morning at the church gates. From what other people have said, the man knows that he was detained by the “new police.” “For a 40-minute conversation,” they replied to parishioners when asked where they were taking the priest. The Russians put a hood over the priest’s head to cover his eyes and took him to the police station on Lutheran Street in Kherson.
Serhiy Chudinovich, a priest who was tortured by Russian soldiers in Kherson
At first, the occupiers did not treat the priest too harshly, trying to persuade him to cooperate.
“Isn’t it good to do good?” the Russian soldiers asked Serhiy. “How can I, a priest and a Christian, say that doing good isn’t a good thing? I said that, of course, it’s good… They said, ‘Let’s record a video—we have to do good; people are hungry,’” Serhiy recalls.
“I nodded,” he says, “but I didn’t agree. I went ahead and said this: ‘Even if I record a video like that, no one will believe me.’” After that, everything got more brutal.”
“I ask for water—they give me vodka. It’s a five-liter jug; they shove it right under my hat, where my mouth is, and pour the liquid in. I thought it was water, but it was vodka. Not even vodka—it was diluted alcohol,” the priest recounts.
When the man again refused to cooperate, the Russians stripped him.
“I’m standing there naked. They take a baton and try to shove it into my anus. Of course, I’m screaming. Everything is flowing out of me: nasal discharge, saliva, tears,” Chudinovich continues.
“They nearly tore a part of my body apart when one of them managed to say, ‘Will you sign the cooperation agreement?’” the priest recounts. “I tell them, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll sign it.’”
Before releasing him, the Russians recorded a propaganda video with Chudinovich, forcing him to say that he had not been subjected to any physical or psychological pressure.
Chudynovych was held in the Kherson torture chamber for only one day, but the memories of that experience still haunt him: “If I hear Russian spoken now, my heart starts racing.”
The priest did not begin cooperating with the Russian occupiers, as he had promised. After he was released, he left occupied Kherson by car.
The Main Directorate of the National Police, where Volodymyr, Serhiy, and Viktor
were held “THEY BROKE ME MORALLY”
Oleg, a 33-year-old entrepreneur, was held in a Kherson torture chamber for 17 days.
Like Chudinovich, he drew the Russians’ attention with his pro-Ukrainian stance. As the owner of a local café, he provided water to protesters demonstrating against the occupying forces. One day, the Russians detained Oleg near his own café and immediately began beating him.
“I shouted at them… I really didn’t know anyone,” the man says. “I begged them to let me go home because I have a small child. And I asked them to take my car as ransom for my release.”
At the same time, Russian soldiers threatened Oleg. “They said they would rape my wife in front of me if I didn’t name the organizers of the rally. And they’d throw my little son (who was 3 months old at the time—ed.) into the Dnipro River or send him to an orphanage in Russia.”
Oleg says that one day they tortured him for an hour and a half by applying an electric current to his genitals.
“They (the Russians—ed.) didn’t ask any questions; they just tortured me,” says Oleg. “Then they threw me off the chair. They laid me on the table, still naked. They called another one of their torturers into the room, whom they called ‘The Pervert.’ He stormed into the room. Very eccentric, very rude.”
“He immediately started hurling insults, hitting me on the back and buttocks, calling me his whore,” Oleg continues. “His slut.” He tried to rape me. He rubbed his genitals against my buttocks from behind for a long time. He tried to grope me. All of this was accompanied by laughter from everyone present. He tried for about 15 minutes, then got angry that he couldn’t do it, and started kicking me—on my buttocks, on my genitals—accompanying it with the words: ‘I can’t fuck this black ass.’ “My whole body down there was completely covered in black bruises.”
The man says that then the same soldier got angry, grabbed a ballpoint pen from the nightstand, shoved it into his anus, and rammed the pen in with his foot. After that, Oleg was thrown off the table and dragged back into the cell.
“Two minutes later, a Buryat man—who usually handled the beatings for them—ran in and, screaming in disgust, pulled the pen out. Apparently, they were afraid that I might hurt myself with that pen,” the victim continues.
The man says this was the turning point of the torture: “I tried to endure it, but after that, I was mentally broken.”
On the seventeenth day of his detention in the Kherson torture chamber, the man was released. Following advice from acquaintances, Oleg’s wife paid the Russians 100,000 hryvnias to secure his release. He was also forced to record a propaganda video before his release.
The man cites several reasons why he decided to share his story. First, he says, he wants those responsible to be punished. Second, he wants the world to know what is happening under Russian occupation.
“Another reason why I’m speaking openly and in detail about what happened to me is that I want others who have gone through similar experiences to also speak up and not remain silent. Because that makes our voices stronger,” Oleg states.
A room at the Kherson police station at 4 Lyuteranska Street.
“IT HAPPENED ALMOST EVERY DAY”
Volodymyr, who chose not to reveal his real name, spent months in Russian captivity.
Along with many others, Volodymyr joined the Ukrainian Territorial Defense Forces on the day of the invasion. He hid weapons and monitored the movements of Russian troops from underground before he was taken prisoner.
It is still difficult for him to recall what the Russians did to him. He was abducted on the street and taken to a torture chamber, where interrogations and torture awaited him.
“During the interrogation, they (the Russians—ed.) used some kind of pliers or something similar,” the man says. — “They clamped down on my genitals, threatening to cut them off. They threatened to use a baton to sexually assault me in an unnatural way.”
A month later, Volodymyr was sent to Russian-occupied Crimea, then to the Russian city of Voronezh, and a little while later, back to Volodymyr. According to him, in addition to regular beatings and threats, the topic of sexual violence was ever-present.
“They constantly threatened us with sexual violence of their own. That is, that they would rape me, force me to perform oral sex, or rape me with pens or rubber batons,” Vladimir says. — “It was actually so widespread that it happened almost every day.”
When asked why, in his opinion, they treated him this way, Volodymyr replies, “That’s how they tried to intimidate us,” and also explains the torture as stemming from a culture that recognizes only power and violence.
“Countries with such values, where to prove how ‘tough’ you are, you have to show that you can coerce a defenseless person of the same sex into a same-sex relationship. It’s one big Gulag. One big prison with the corresponding mindset,” Volodymyr reflects.
“This is Russia,” the man says. “What else is there to say?”
THE RIGHT TO THE TRUTH
Anton Drobovich, head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, emphasizes the importance of investigating Russia’s war crimes, even if the prospect of restoring justice seems distant.
“Specific cases involving specific individuals must be investigated. The perpetrators must be found and brought to justice. This is an important part of restoring justice and a person’s dignity—it is the right to the truth,” the historian asserts.
Thanks to Oleg’s testimony, the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office identified several Russian military personnel suspected of participating in his mistreatment.
When journalists from “Slidstvo.Info” called both Russians, they denied any involvement in the torture and hung up.
If you’d prefer to watch the video with subtitles in another language, go to YouTube Settings → Subtitles → Auto-translate and select the language of your choice.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.