“Tell us so we’ll know when you die”: Testimony of torture at the Borisoglebsk Colony and the return of a body
Source: Slidstvo Info
Author: Nastya Gorpinchenko
No food for several days in a row, daily beatings with various instruments of torture, dogs set upon prisoners, and festering wounds. This is the reality for Ukrainian prisoners of war held at Penal Colony No. 9 in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh Oblast, Russia, which borders the Kharkiv region. During another prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia in April 2024, the body of soldier Volodymyr Mishchenko, who had died in captivity, was returned home. Ukrainian forensic experts confirmed that he had cachexia (severe physical exhaustion with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy—ed.) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
Little has been reported in the media about this detention facility, and according to information provided to “Slidstvo.Info” by the Office of the Prosecutor General, only 16 prisoners of war have been returned from there since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Journalists from “Slidstvo.Info spoke with the wife of a soldier who died in captivity and a fellow soldier who spent nearly a year in the same cell with him to learn more about yet another torture chamber on Russian territory, where Ukrainian soldiers are held in the cold and with almost no food.
“START A NEW LIFE, AND I WILL DEFINITELY FIND YOU”
Volodymyr Mishchenko is originally from the Donetsk region. Before the war, he lived with his family in Myrnohrad. Volodymyr had been in the military since 2017. In 2020, after his contract ended, he returned to work at a mine for a year, but later reenlisted. He served as a driver and medic at a hospital in Pokrovsk. In January 2022, Volodymyr Mishchenko was sent on a mission to Mariupol. He was supposed to replace a colleague who had gone on leave for just one month, Volodymyr’s wife, Viktoria Mishchenko, told journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.”
“On the morning of the 24th, he woke me up and said it had all started. Around 9 or 10 in the morning, he called me and said that 20 wounded people had already been brought to the hospital from the left bank… And on the morning of the 26th, he called me and said, ‘Vika, there’s no way out of Mariupol: no trains, no buses—nothing. Take the kids and leave; I don’t want my children to be stuck in a basement like we are here,” the woman recalls.
Victoria listened to her husband, packed their things in a few hours, and they left with the children. Her husband still tried to get in touch with the family, but these were brief conversations where, mid-sentence, someone on the other end of the line would shout “airstrike,” and the connection would be cut off.
Vladimir last called his wife on March 10.
“He said, ‘Start a new life, and I’ll definitely find you,’” Victoria recalls.
“NOT EVERYONE COULD HAVE LOADED THE BODIES AND TRANSPORTED THEM TO THE MORTUARY”
In the early days of the full-scale invasion, Volodymyr drove around Mariupol collecting medicine and food for the wounded and medical staff at the military hospital; and later began transporting the bodies of fallen soldiers and civilians to the morgue, soldier Serhiy—codenamed “Kasper”—told journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.” He was the commander of the logistics unit at that hospital and Volodymyr’s direct superior.
“He was a good guy. He did all his work—without any airs, without any fuss. Not everyone would be able to load bodies into bags and transport them to the morgue. He had nerves of steel,” says “Kasper.”
According to Serhiy, sometime in early March—he doesn’t remember the exact date—Vladimir, along with other soldiers temporarily assigned to the Mariupol hospital, decided to try to leave the city. Serhiy hasn’t heard from him since.
“LETTERS DIDN’T REACH HIM IN CAPTIVITY”
On March 23, 2022, Viktoria received a call from her neighbors. They said they had seen a video of Ukrainians in captivity, and her husband was in it. She found another video in May. Until the end of summer, these videos were the only information she had about Volodymyr. She had no contact with him. At the end of August, Viktoria received a letter—a formal one, but still confirmation that her husband was alive.
“They’re feeding him and treating him well. Take care of the children, wait for me, and I will definitely find you,” the letter read.
Victoria also wrote letters to Volodymyr, but they never reached him. This was later recounted by soldiers who had seen Volodymyr in captivity upon their return from captivity.
In 2023, there were only two updates about her husband from the Red Cross. On both occasions, representatives of the organization called her and confirmed that, according to their information, Volodymyr Mishchenko was being held captive. However, nothing else was known about Volodymyr’s condition or his whereabouts.
“HE’S HOLDING ON AND SUPPORTING OTHERS”
In February 2024, a soldier—also named Volodymyr—contacted Viktoria. He had spent about a year in the same cell as her husband.
“He told me that my husband was in Borisoglibsk, that he was holding on himself and supporting others. And I realized that this was true of my husband, because that’s exactly how he’d always been,” Viktoria recalls.
After receiving this news, she couldn’t sit still, because now she finally knew where her husband was being held.
“I was ready to go there. I knew I had two children, that no one would let me go there, that it would probably be a one-way trip, and then who would take care of the children… I understood everything, but I couldn’t calm down,” recalls Victoria Mishchenko.
“IN THE NEIGHBORING CELL, A MAN ROTTED AWAY ALIVE. THEY TOLD HIM, ‘SCREAM!’ SO WE’D KNOW WHEN YOU DIE.”
Vladimir Miroshnychenko, a soldier with the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, who called Viktoria with news about her husband, spent 1 year and 10 months in captivity — the entire time in Borisoglibsk — first in Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, and later in the isolation ward of Penal Colony No. 9. For about a year, he shared a cell with Volodymyr Mishchenko — Viktoria’s husband. However, about half a year before his release, they were separated into different cells.
When Miroshnychenko saw Mishchenko, he had lost about 40 kilograms from his usual weight.
“He was walking around; he had no wounds, nothing like that yet. He told me that he weighed over 100 kilograms while he was there. But when they weighed us, he was already down to 63. The food was terrible. Just water with a couple of potatoes floating in it. Sometimes they wouldn’t give us anything to eat for a couple of days,” recalls Volodymyr Miroshnychenko.
In addition, the prisoners were beaten every day: in the morning and in the evening. This didn’t depend on rank or the length of imprisonment.
If you want to see more exposés of crimes committed by the Russian military on our website, support our work with a one-time or monthly
donation
“There were rotations there: sometimes Chechens would come by, sometimes Buryats. It was terrifying there. One prisoner rotted away alive right in front of us; they shoved a knife into one guy’s mouth, slashing his cheek; they sprayed pepper spray into another’s mouth; they impaled guys on sticks,” recalls Miroshnychenko, lighting a cigarette.
They could unleash the dogs at any moment, because during interrogations—supposedly “as part of the procedure”—dog handlers were always present, the man explains. One man was badly bitten, and his wounds began to fester.
“I didn’t see him with my own eyes because he was in the cell next door, but we heard everything, and we also heard when they carried him out—after he was already dead. And before he got really bad, the guards would say, ‘Moan until you die, so we’ll know when you’re dead,’”—the soldier recounts.
You could hear everything: the suffering of prisoners in neighboring cells and the people being beaten as they were taken away for interrogation.
You weren’t allowed to look at the guards—only at your own feet. It was also forbidden to lift your head even during the already rare walks. However, based on the voices around him, as well as what he managed to make out during walks and on the way to interrogations, Volodymyr estimated that there were about 100 people being held in solitary confinement.
As reported to journalists by “Slidstvo.Info” by the Office of the Prosecutor General, there were 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war—defenders who had been returned as part of a prisoner exchange—held at Borisoglebsk Penal Colony No. 9 of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Voronezh region.
“When we came back from interrogations, my body felt like a sweater (during the interview, Volodymyr was wearing a gray-blue T-shirt—ed.). I’d never seen anything like that before—I didn’t know such a thing was possible. We even had to help each other onto our beds because we couldn’t get up on our own. Some of the guys had to use the toilet standing up because they couldn’t squat,” says Volodymyr.
They were interrogated by FSB representatives. Vladimir says that the agents themselves mentioned which agency they were from, but did not give any names or call signs.
“I really believed they would exchange us. Every day I waited for them to wake me up at night and take me out for the exchange. We supported each other there, because some wanted to suffocate themselves, hang themselves, or slit their wrists. They (the Russians—ed.) even slipped us razor blades themselves,” says Volodymyr.
On January 31, 2024, her husband was exchanged.
“CAHEXIA AND BILATERAL PURULENT BRONCHOPNEUMONIA”
This past summer, an investigator called Viktoria and informed her that her husband’s body had likely been returned to Ukraine, and that she needed to come to Vinnytsia to provide another DNA sample and identify the body.
“I didn’t go into the identification room; I didn’t see him. His biological brother and cousin were there. They said the body was recognizable. I still have the documents with the medical diagnoses and photos of the body, but I don’t take them out—I don’t have the strength to look at them,” says the wife of Volodymyr Mishchenko, who died in captivity.
Vladimir’s wife shared the autopsy report with journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.” The forensic experts’ conclusion: Volodymyr Mishchenko died in captivity due to cachexia (severe physical exhaustion with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy—ed.) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
“He always weighed over 100 kilograms. Even when he weighed just under 100 kilograms, he looked thin because he is 1 meter 90 centimeters tall. He was probably severely lacking both food and vitamins…,” says his wife.
“ONE CAN CONCLUDE THAT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT’S ACTIONS ARE DELIBERATE AND SYSTEMATIC”
Starving prisoners is one of the ways the Russians treat Ukrainian prisoners of war. Serhiy, a soldier with the call sign “Kasper” and commander of Volodymyr Mishchenko, also spoke about the appalling food rations, which caused many to lose about half their body weight. From Mariupol, he was first taken to Olenivka (Colony No. 120 in occupied Olenivka, where an explosion occurred on July 28, 2022. More than 50 soldiers from the “Azov” regiment were killed then, and over 70 more suffered serious injuries—ed.), and then to a pretrial detention center in the city of Kineshma in the Ivanovo Region, 400 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
“The food was simply terrible. There was a period when we barely got two small mugs of food for the whole day—0.3 liters each, those tiny ones. They beat the muscles out of our legs, set dogs on us, and shocked us with stun guns. That’s the ‘beauty’ of life in a Russian prison. They used us as practice during interrogations—they said so themselves. “They tested new models of stun guns or batons—where and how to use them ‘more effectively,’ and what the consequences would be,” Serhiy recalls.
But aside from interrogations, you could get zapped at any moment, the soldier explains: “They forced us to memorize a list of names from the so-called ‘Alley of Angels.’ It’s a monument there with the names of ‘the children of Donbas who died during the war.’ And the guards could come up with the list at any moment, call out a number, and you had to say the name. If you didn’t say it, they’d shock you.”
According to Serhiy, about 250 people were being held in this same detention center before he was exchanged.
“Given the wide geographical spread of detention facilities where torture was committed against prisoners of war, the similar methods of inflicting physical and psychological violence, and the identical motives for committing torture (including those based on discrimination on national and linguistic grounds), one can conclude that there was a deliberate, systematic nature of the actions taken by officials of the Russian Federation’s government agencies,” said Taras Semkiv, deputy head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict at the Office of the Prosecutor General, in a comment to journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.”
In total, as of now, according to information provided to journalists by the Office of the Prosecutor General, 2,836 repatriated Ukrainian prisoners of war have been recognized as victims of torture while in Russian captivity. Overall, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukraine has already brought home about four thousand of its citizens.
Author: Nastya Gorpinchenko
No food for several days in a row, daily beatings with various instruments of torture, dogs set upon prisoners, and festering wounds. This is the reality for Ukrainian prisoners of war held at Penal Colony No. 9 in Borisoglebsk, Voronezh Oblast, Russia, which borders the Kharkiv region. During another prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia in April 2024, the body of soldier Volodymyr Mishchenko, who had died in captivity, was returned home. Ukrainian forensic experts confirmed that he had cachexia (severe physical exhaustion with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy—ed.) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
Little has been reported in the media about this detention facility, and according to information provided to “Slidstvo.Info” by the Office of the Prosecutor General, only 16 prisoners of war have been returned from there since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Journalists from “Slidstvo.Info spoke with the wife of a soldier who died in captivity and a fellow soldier who spent nearly a year in the same cell with him to learn more about yet another torture chamber on Russian territory, where Ukrainian soldiers are held in the cold and with almost no food.
“START A NEW LIFE, AND I WILL DEFINITELY FIND YOU”
Volodymyr Mishchenko is originally from the Donetsk region. Before the war, he lived with his family in Myrnohrad. Volodymyr had been in the military since 2017. In 2020, after his contract ended, he returned to work at a mine for a year, but later reenlisted. He served as a driver and medic at a hospital in Pokrovsk. In January 2022, Volodymyr Mishchenko was sent on a mission to Mariupol. He was supposed to replace a colleague who had gone on leave for just one month, Volodymyr’s wife, Viktoria Mishchenko, told journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.”
“On the morning of the 24th, he woke me up and said it had all started. Around 9 or 10 in the morning, he called me and said that 20 wounded people had already been brought to the hospital from the left bank… And on the morning of the 26th, he called me and said, ‘Vika, there’s no way out of Mariupol: no trains, no buses—nothing. Take the kids and leave; I don’t want my children to be stuck in a basement like we are here,” the woman recalls.
Victoria listened to her husband, packed their things in a few hours, and they left with the children. Her husband still tried to get in touch with the family, but these were brief conversations where, mid-sentence, someone on the other end of the line would shout “airstrike,” and the connection would be cut off.
Vladimir last called his wife on March 10.
“He said, ‘Start a new life, and I’ll definitely find you,’” Victoria recalls.
“NOT EVERYONE COULD HAVE LOADED THE BODIES AND TRANSPORTED THEM TO THE MORTUARY”
In the early days of the full-scale invasion, Volodymyr drove around Mariupol collecting medicine and food for the wounded and medical staff at the military hospital; and later began transporting the bodies of fallen soldiers and civilians to the morgue, soldier Serhiy—codenamed “Kasper”—told journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.” He was the commander of the logistics unit at that hospital and Volodymyr’s direct superior.
“He was a good guy. He did all his work—without any airs, without any fuss. Not everyone would be able to load bodies into bags and transport them to the morgue. He had nerves of steel,” says “Kasper.”
According to Serhiy, sometime in early March—he doesn’t remember the exact date—Vladimir, along with other soldiers temporarily assigned to the Mariupol hospital, decided to try to leave the city. Serhiy hasn’t heard from him since.
“LETTERS DIDN’T REACH HIM IN CAPTIVITY”
On March 23, 2022, Viktoria received a call from her neighbors. They said they had seen a video of Ukrainians in captivity, and her husband was in it. She found another video in May. Until the end of summer, these videos were the only information she had about Volodymyr. She had no contact with him. At the end of August, Viktoria received a letter—a formal one, but still confirmation that her husband was alive.
“They’re feeding him and treating him well. Take care of the children, wait for me, and I will definitely find you,” the letter read.
Victoria also wrote letters to Volodymyr, but they never reached him. This was later recounted by soldiers who had seen Volodymyr in captivity upon their return from captivity.
In 2023, there were only two updates about her husband from the Red Cross. On both occasions, representatives of the organization called her and confirmed that, according to their information, Volodymyr Mishchenko was being held captive. However, nothing else was known about Volodymyr’s condition or his whereabouts.
“HE’S HOLDING ON AND SUPPORTING OTHERS”
In February 2024, a soldier—also named Volodymyr—contacted Viktoria. He had spent about a year in the same cell as her husband.
“He told me that my husband was in Borisoglibsk, that he was holding on himself and supporting others. And I realized that this was true of my husband, because that’s exactly how he’d always been,” Viktoria recalls.
After receiving this news, she couldn’t sit still, because now she finally knew where her husband was being held.
“I was ready to go there. I knew I had two children, that no one would let me go there, that it would probably be a one-way trip, and then who would take care of the children… I understood everything, but I couldn’t calm down,” recalls Victoria Mishchenko.
“IN THE NEIGHBORING CELL, A MAN ROTTED AWAY ALIVE. THEY TOLD HIM, ‘SCREAM!’ SO WE’D KNOW WHEN YOU DIE.”
Vladimir Miroshnychenko, a soldier with the 36th Separate Marine Brigade, who called Viktoria with news about her husband, spent 1 year and 10 months in captivity — the entire time in Borisoglibsk — first in Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, and later in the isolation ward of Penal Colony No. 9. For about a year, he shared a cell with Volodymyr Mishchenko — Viktoria’s husband. However, about half a year before his release, they were separated into different cells.
When Miroshnychenko saw Mishchenko, he had lost about 40 kilograms from his usual weight.
“He was walking around; he had no wounds, nothing like that yet. He told me that he weighed over 100 kilograms while he was there. But when they weighed us, he was already down to 63. The food was terrible. Just water with a couple of potatoes floating in it. Sometimes they wouldn’t give us anything to eat for a couple of days,” recalls Volodymyr Miroshnychenko.
In addition, the prisoners were beaten every day: in the morning and in the evening. This didn’t depend on rank or the length of imprisonment.
If you want to see more exposés of crimes committed by the Russian military on our website, support our work with a one-time or monthly
donation
“There were rotations there: sometimes Chechens would come by, sometimes Buryats. It was terrifying there. One prisoner rotted away alive right in front of us; they shoved a knife into one guy’s mouth, slashing his cheek; they sprayed pepper spray into another’s mouth; they impaled guys on sticks,” recalls Miroshnychenko, lighting a cigarette.
They could unleash the dogs at any moment, because during interrogations—supposedly “as part of the procedure”—dog handlers were always present, the man explains. One man was badly bitten, and his wounds began to fester.
“I didn’t see him with my own eyes because he was in the cell next door, but we heard everything, and we also heard when they carried him out—after he was already dead. And before he got really bad, the guards would say, ‘Moan until you die, so we’ll know when you’re dead,’”—the soldier recounts.
You could hear everything: the suffering of prisoners in neighboring cells and the people being beaten as they were taken away for interrogation.
You weren’t allowed to look at the guards—only at your own feet. It was also forbidden to lift your head even during the already rare walks. However, based on the voices around him, as well as what he managed to make out during walks and on the way to interrogations, Volodymyr estimated that there were about 100 people being held in solitary confinement.
As reported to journalists by “Slidstvo.Info” by the Office of the Prosecutor General, there were 16 Ukrainian prisoners of war—defenders who had been returned as part of a prisoner exchange—held at Borisoglebsk Penal Colony No. 9 of the Federal Penitentiary Service in the Voronezh region.
“When we came back from interrogations, my body felt like a sweater (during the interview, Volodymyr was wearing a gray-blue T-shirt—ed.). I’d never seen anything like that before—I didn’t know such a thing was possible. We even had to help each other onto our beds because we couldn’t get up on our own. Some of the guys had to use the toilet standing up because they couldn’t squat,” says Volodymyr.
They were interrogated by FSB representatives. Vladimir says that the agents themselves mentioned which agency they were from, but did not give any names or call signs.
“I really believed they would exchange us. Every day I waited for them to wake me up at night and take me out for the exchange. We supported each other there, because some wanted to suffocate themselves, hang themselves, or slit their wrists. They (the Russians—ed.) even slipped us razor blades themselves,” says Volodymyr.
On January 31, 2024, her husband was exchanged.
“CAHEXIA AND BILATERAL PURULENT BRONCHOPNEUMONIA”
This past summer, an investigator called Viktoria and informed her that her husband’s body had likely been returned to Ukraine, and that she needed to come to Vinnytsia to provide another DNA sample and identify the body.
“I didn’t go into the identification room; I didn’t see him. His biological brother and cousin were there. They said the body was recognizable. I still have the documents with the medical diagnoses and photos of the body, but I don’t take them out—I don’t have the strength to look at them,” says the wife of Volodymyr Mishchenko, who died in captivity.
Vladimir’s wife shared the autopsy report with journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.” The forensic experts’ conclusion: Volodymyr Mishchenko died in captivity due to cachexia (severe physical exhaustion with critical weight loss and muscle atrophy—ed.) and bilateral purulent pneumonia.
“He always weighed over 100 kilograms. Even when he weighed just under 100 kilograms, he looked thin because he is 1 meter 90 centimeters tall. He was probably severely lacking both food and vitamins…,” says his wife.
“ONE CAN CONCLUDE THAT THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT’S ACTIONS ARE DELIBERATE AND SYSTEMATIC”
Starving prisoners is one of the ways the Russians treat Ukrainian prisoners of war. Serhiy, a soldier with the call sign “Kasper” and commander of Volodymyr Mishchenko, also spoke about the appalling food rations, which caused many to lose about half their body weight. From Mariupol, he was first taken to Olenivka (Colony No. 120 in occupied Olenivka, where an explosion occurred on July 28, 2022. More than 50 soldiers from the “Azov” regiment were killed then, and over 70 more suffered serious injuries—ed.), and then to a pretrial detention center in the city of Kineshma in the Ivanovo Region, 400 kilometers northeast of Moscow.
“The food was simply terrible. There was a period when we barely got two small mugs of food for the whole day—0.3 liters each, those tiny ones. They beat the muscles out of our legs, set dogs on us, and shocked us with stun guns. That’s the ‘beauty’ of life in a Russian prison. They used us as practice during interrogations—they said so themselves. “They tested new models of stun guns or batons—where and how to use them ‘more effectively,’ and what the consequences would be,” Serhiy recalls.
But aside from interrogations, you could get zapped at any moment, the soldier explains: “They forced us to memorize a list of names from the so-called ‘Alley of Angels.’ It’s a monument there with the names of ‘the children of Donbas who died during the war.’ And the guards could come up with the list at any moment, call out a number, and you had to say the name. If you didn’t say it, they’d shock you.”
According to Serhiy, about 250 people were being held in this same detention center before he was exchanged.
“Given the wide geographical spread of detention facilities where torture was committed against prisoners of war, the similar methods of inflicting physical and psychological violence, and the identical motives for committing torture (including those based on discrimination on national and linguistic grounds), one can conclude that there was a deliberate, systematic nature of the actions taken by officials of the Russian Federation’s government agencies,” said Taras Semkiv, deputy head of the Department for Combating Crimes Committed in the Context of Armed Conflict at the Office of the Prosecutor General, in a comment to journalists from “Slidstvo.Info.”
In total, as of now, according to information provided to journalists by the Office of the Prosecutor General, 2,836 repatriated Ukrainian prisoners of war have been recognized as victims of torture while in Russian captivity. Overall, according to the Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukraine has already brought home about four thousand of its citizens.
This is an automatic translation generated by DeepL.