When the assault ended, Vitaliy* was out of strength. His prison mates helped him clean his face, which was covered in blood. After a pause, his captors returned. They put a bag over his head, threw him on the floor, and bound him.
“They connected wires to my legs. I don’t know how long it lasted. They gave me electric shocks,” says Vitaliy calmly, sitting in Puri Chveni, a Georgian restaurant in the city of Zaporiyia. He didn’t order anything to eat or drink. The former mechanic still carries emotional wounds, not just physical ones. Though he remembers the details of his imprisonment, he still has to gather courage every time he speaks about it aloud.
Vitaliy recalls every detail from the day he was arrested: July 27, 2022. On that late summer day, Russians showed up at his gas station in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol. They beat him, asked if he knew anyone in the Ukrainian army, and took him away. Vitaliy was first sent to a place known as the garages—a vacant industrial space used by the occupiers to torture Ukrainians—where he underwent electric shocks. He was then transferred to another detention center under miserable conditions for almost two months. There, he was denied contact with family or a lawyer, but ultimately, no charges were brought against him. He was released on the night of September 22, 2022. Since then, he has fled the occupied territories.
Like Vitaliy, thousands of civilians have been illegally abducted and secretly detained since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Mikhail Savva, an expert from the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL)—a Ukrainian human rights NGO awarded the Nobel Prize—explained: “Very often, they are classified as ‘disappeared’, meaning they are captured unofficially and thrown into basements or pits excavated in the cities. They are beaten, tortured, and forced to confess.” Afterward, they are entirely isolated from the outside world.
These ghost prisoners have become an obsession for Viktoriia Roschyna, a Ukrainian journalist. Roschyna went missing on August 3, 2023, while investigating secret detention centers in the triangle between Melitopol, Energodar, and Berdiansk, three cities in the southeast occupied by Russia. She herself became trapped in this opaque system. Viktoriia was imprisoned for over a year, including at least eight months in Taganrog, across the border in Russian territory, before being declared dead in October 2024 by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to continue the work of murdered, imprisoned, or silenced reporters, launched an investigation as soon as news of her death broke. Together with 12 partner media outlets, they spent three months investigating the systematic detention and torture of Ukrainian civilians by Russia.
“Most likely it’s the FSB”
Illegal detention often begins in the same way that it happened to Vitaliy. The captors are almost always masked and dressed in non-descript clothing, often with assault rifles slung over their shoulders.
At around 9 am on August 24, 2022, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Maksym Ivanov saw a group of Russian gunmen arriving in a Renault Duster. This 28-year-old landscaper was detained while distributing pro-Ukrainian leaflets with his partner, Tatyana Bekh, in downtown Melitopol.
“They threw me to the ground, searched my backpack, and looked at my phone,” the young man recalls. Handcuffed, the couple was taken to the police station on Chernyshevskogo Street. Ivanov did not back down during the interrogation led by two Russians “in t-shirts, berets, and masks.” He told them they “had no right to occupy Ukraine.” His guards responded by hitting him in the ribs and face.
Although hard to prove, locals believe that the Russian intelligence agents are involved in these actions. “Most likely it’s the FSB,” Savva from the CCL said, referring to the Russian Federal Security Service. “But that’s not always the case. They hide their identities. It could also be military counterintelligence.”
In its latest report, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, created by the UN Human Rights Council, also suggests the presence of “Russian armed forces” and the FSB in these abductions. However, the lack of clarity about the exact identity of the abductors has hindered family searches.
Olga* has moved heaven and earth to find even the slightest trace of her husband, Oleksander*, who was captured in December 2022 in his village, north of Melitopol. “I contacted the Russian Federation’s Investigative Committee from the very first day,” Olga, 55, explained to Forbidden Stories. “I reached out to the FSB twice, and they told me he wasn’t detained and that there were no charges against him. I wrote to the Russian Ministry of Defense eight times, which replied for the first time in March 2024.”
A Torture Machine
While their families try to piece together scant clues about their loved ones, the prisoners are being destroyed during their detention. It wasn’t just the torture, says Vitaliy: the living conditions were deplorable as well. Vitaliy describes the cell where he was held, in the garages, as a 10 by 5 meter room with an empty metal shelf, three or four old wooden doors on which several tattered blankets were thrown, and a sunken sofa. A bucket was placed in a corner as a toilet.
“We slept on this sofa and on these doors,” Vitaliy said. The next detention center in Melitopol was not much better; the cell was situated in a semi-basement, with a non-functional sink and no access to a shower.
On top of that, there were daily torture sessions. “There were Russians specifically in charge of this,” said Petro*, who was held for a month in the garages. “As soon as they played very loud music, it meant they started torturing. Even with the sound, I could hear my cellmate screaming and begging them to stop.”
The residents of the occupied territories adopted a name for the cells where torture occurred: torture chambers.
“Torture is inseparable from interrogation, and the FSB becomes violent to obtain a confession,” a European security source told a member of the consortium led by Forbidden Stories.
Once a confession is obtained under torture, some are released. Others, however, are transferred to the official Russian prison system, where they remain as ghost prisoners, almost impossible to locate or contact. In rarer cases, Ukrainian civilians are falsely accused of charges like terrorism or sabotage.
Entering an official penal colony or a pre-trial detention center recognized by Moscow is far from a return to normalcy for these prisoners; quite the contrary. “Russia operates a torture machine,” said Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatments or Punishments, to Forbidden Stories. “It’s an institutionalized practice both inside and outside the country.”
The Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the CCL have identified 186 locations where Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are confined, both in Russia and in the occupied territories. Of these, Forbidden Stories and its collaborators have identified at least 29 where torture and mistreatment are systematic. Detention center No. 2 (or SIZO-2) in Taganrog is known to be one of the worst. It was here that journalist Viktoriia Roschyna was found in late December 2023.
“We’ll show you the delights of life”
“A new Ukrainian whore has arrived, and we are going to take her.”
These were the words that greeted Yelyzaveta Shylyk on the morning of January 31, 2023, the day she arrived in Taganrog. Before insulting her, the guards had stripped her naked and filmed her from all angles. As they shoved her hands behind her back to take her to the cell, one of the guards said, “Get ready, we’re going to show you all the delights of life.”
Her escorts hit her in the side, then on the legs, back, shoulder blades, and arms with a metal rod.
“I was stunned,” said Shylyk, a former member of the Aidar battalion of the Ukrainian army, who had hung up her uniform two months before her detention.
According to this investigation, hundreds of Ukrainians, both prisoners of war and civilians, have passed through SIZO-2 since the beginning of the Russian invasion. For years, this pre-trial detention center in Taganrog, a Russian city located in the Rostov region and bordered by the Sea of Azov, has held minors and women with children. Despite its light green facade, it is a grim-looking facility, with barbed wire, brick buildings, and a faded perimeter wall. After invading Ukraine, the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia (FSIN) opted to turn this detention center into some kind of torture factory, expanding it to accommodate a growing number of captives.
“Taganrog is one of the worst places I have been,” said Julian Pylypei, a former Ukrainian marine who was detained for a month in SIZO-2.
For Pylypei, who spent 30 months in captivity passing through six different prisons, SIZO-2 stood out for its unique brutality. Twice a day, “the guards come and hit you with all they can,” he said. “They have hit me with a stun gun, beaten me all over my body, in my arms, ribs, and strangled me.”
The ‘Russian Guantanamo’
The internal workings of Taganrog and the FSIN are a black box, almost impossible to investigate.
Two Russian human rights defenders, who requested anonymity because they continue to work in Russia, told Forbidden Stories that the FSIN took additional measures to conceal or erase prison statistics after the invasion, in an attempt to obscure any future investigation. “We know nothing about the people working there or the facilities. Absolutely everything is hidden,” they said.
Faced with this black box, Forbidden Stories and its partners used satellite images to analyze the transformation of Taganrog into the Russian Guantanamo in the months following the invasion. Images obtained by the consortium reveal the installation of new metal roofs on several buildings of SIZO-2 by the time the first Ukrainian prisoners, 89 fighters from the Azov regiment of Mariupol, arrived in May 2022. According to those images, construction on the building continued until early January 2023.
Despite the renovations, our investigation points to probable overcrowding in the prison. Before the invasion, SIZO-2 officially housed 442 inmates, but supply data obtained by the consortium suggest a significant increase. The potato supply for the facility, for example, has more than quadrupled since November 2021. “Our cell was designed for three people. But we were six,” Pylypei noted.
Unmasking the Hierarchy of Taganrog
The information obtained by Forbidden Stories and its collaborators from a source in Ukrainian intelligence confirms the extent of the abuses suffered by Ukrainians detained in Taganrog. According to that source, a torture chamber has been installed in the basement of SIZO-2. Among the worst methods employed were electric shocks on wet bodies, “slow” asphyxiation with a gas mask, naked detention in a cage with a dog, and subzero temperatures. Apparently, 15 people died from torture and beatings in autumn 2024, according to Ukrainian intelligence. “Twice, they put me in a chair and applied 380-volt shocks, with clamps attached between the toes of my wet feet,” said Shylyk, a former Aidar fighter.
Shylyk’s torturers had no names or faces, and often used masks and nicknames. Nevertheless, our consortium can reveal the identities of several members of the hierarchy of SIZO-2. These include Alexander Shtoda, director of the Taganrog detention center; Andrey V. Mikhailichenko, his deputy; and Alexander Klyuykov, head of the special department in Taganrog.
Among the torturers were special units of the FSIN. With names like Grozny, Shark, Lynx, and Saturn, these units rotated between several prisons. Their goal: to break the will of Ukrainians. “Our hierarchy told us bluntly: ‘you can do whatever you want’,” recounted a former special forces member who eventually defected. “The violence was rampant, completely uncontrolled.”
None of the Russian officials consulted by the consortium—the Kremlin, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), as well as several high-ranking officials from Taganrog—responded to requests for comments.
Meanwhile, the few Russians who were authorized to visit Taganrog repeat the same story. The detention conditions for Ukrainians in SIZO-2 “are not that bad,” according to Igor Omelchenko, head of the Public Oversight Committee (CSP), an organization that is supposed to bolster public oversight of detention facilities.
But for those who have been released, memories of SIZO-2 remain vivid and painful. Mykhailo Chaplya, who was detained for 22 months in SIZO-2, showed us his scarred hands. The guards would make him hold his hands against the wall and then hit him, cutting into his palms. “Everyone who leaves Taganrog has these scars,” he said.
Meanwhile, the families of the missing detainees continue their frantic search for their loved ones. Among them is Anastasia Glukhovska, a 32-year-old journalist who worked for RIA Melitopol until the city was occupied by Russian forces. Abducted on August 20, 2023, her family heard nothing from her for a year and a half until the Russian Red Cross listed her as a “prisoner of war” on February 26.
“A source told us she was in Taganrog until August,” said her sister, Diana. She might have crossed paths with Viktoriia. Glukhovska’s sister described the pain of missing a loved one: the unanswered letters, the guilt of not doing enough or overlooking key clues. “We’ve only received one document in a year and a half of captivity. That’s not normal,” Diana says. “My sister has done nothing wrong. They just hold her because they want to.”
“The violence was rampant, totally uncontrolled.”
For its testimonial value, the following are excerpts from the statements of a former FSIN special forces member, now a defector.
“At first, we heard that a special unit was going to the Bryansk region. I thought: ‘Well, maybe they’re being sent there to fight.’ I vehemently opposed this. But then I found out that they were going there to torture prisoners. Not just prisoners of war, because only a small percentage of them were soldiers. The rest were civilians: people who had been kidnapped, taken to Russian territory, and subjected to horrible treatment.
“The whole chain, from the general and his deputy down to the commander of the special forces unit and the soldiers, told us we had to ‘work hard,’ do everything we could. That was the euphemism; everyone understood what it meant. No violent actions would be taped. That was made clear. No documentation, no oversight. The violence was rampant, totally uncontrolled. It was as if they were no longer in Russia and were free to do absolutely whatever they wanted. It wasn’t just psychological pressure. It was deliberate destruction, by the special forces, of everyone involved.
“An anecdote stuck with me. A prisoner from Azov was in the arms courtyard, and the chief was shouting at him. The prisoner said: ‘What can I do? Hang myself?’ The chief replied: ‘Give him a rope. Let him hang himself. And don’t call the doctors. Don’t open the cell. Die, bitch.’”
*The first names have been changed at the request of the victims.
