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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial | |
ARTICLE VIEW: | |
Thousands of Ukrainians have been sent to Russian prisons. Ukraine says | |
they’re being held as bargaining chips | |
By Ivana Kottasová and Olga Voitovych, CNN | |
Updated: | |
12:00 AM EDT, Mon May 6, 2024 | |
Source: CNN | |
“Dear mom and dad, I am alive and well. I am doing well. Dima.” | |
Handwritten on a small piece of paper, this is the only message Halyna | |
and Vasyl Khyliuk have received from their son Dmytro Khyliuk, known | |
as Dima, since he was taken by more than two years ago. | |
The Ukrainian journalist was detained in March 2022 during the | |
occupation of his village, Kozarovychi, north of Kyiv. As far as his | |
parents know, the 49-year-old correspondent for the Ukrainian | |
Independent Information Agency was transferred to Russia, where he is | |
still being held despite – according to his lawyer – having never | |
been convicted or charged. | |
The Ukrainian government says there are thousands of people like Dima, | |
civilians arrested by Russia who have been held in arbitrary detention | |
for years. Kyiv has officially confirmed around 1,700 cases, but human | |
rights researchers estimate the real number is five to seven times | |
higher. In all, some 37,000 Ukrainians – civilian adults and | |
children, and military members – are unaccounted for, according to | |
the Ukrainian ombudsman’s office, which says that people are still | |
being seized in areas under Russian occupation. CNN cannot | |
independently verify the number of detainees. | |
Many of those detained have been moved to prisons deep inside Russia, | |
kept alongside criminals and prisoners of war, in breach of | |
international humanitarian law. Human rights groups have identified | |
some 100 detention facilities across Russia and occupied areas of | |
Ukraine where civilians are being held, including several that have | |
been opened or expanded specifically to accommodate them. | |
“The Russians want to recognize a lot of them as military combatants | |
and give them prisoner of war status … the main reason being (to | |
build) a bank of POWs for exchanges,” Ukraine’s human rights | |
commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, told CNN in Kyiv. Lubinets said that | |
recognizing Ukrainian civilians as would be both illegal and | |
dangerous, because it would put Ukrainians in occupied areas at higher | |
risk of being detained to be used as bargaining chips. | |
“These people are not prisoners of war; they are civilian hostages. I | |
use that word to emphasize what the Russian Federation is doing – | |
they are holding civilians as hostages,” he said. Under the Geneva | |
Conventions, that regulate the conduct of armed conflict, | |
hostage-taking is explicitly banned. Warring parties can intern people, | |
including civilians. But the rules on who can be detained, why and for | |
how long are strict. | |
“The rule is that it is not a punishment,” Achille Després from | |
the Kyiv branch of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) | |
told CNN, adding that civilians can only be held if it’s | |
The Ukrainian government and several international organizations say | |
Russia is committing war crimes by holding people like Dima. Concerns | |
over Russia’s arbitrary detentions of Ukrainian civilians are so | |
grave that 45 members of the Organization for Security and Co-operation | |
in Europe (OSCE) launched a special into the issue in February with | |
the aim of finding ways to hold Russia accountable. | |
Desperate search | |
Speaking to CNN at their home in Kozarovychi, which has since been | |
liberated and partially repaired by Ukrainian volunteers, the Khyliuks | |
recalled the horror of their son’s capture and the uncertainty of his | |
continued detention. | |
In the early , Russian troops took over their home, parking their tank | |
in the garden and stealing anything of value. The Khyliuks were | |
sheltering at a neighbor’s house, only occasionally venturing outside | |
to get supplies. It was during one of these outings that Dima and Vasyl | |
found themselves surrounded by a group of Russian soldiers armed with | |
machine guns. | |
“They put some kind of jackets over our heads and taped our eyes, so | |
we couldn’t see anything. Dima and I were separated. Then a week | |
later, they took us to Dymer. We spent two nights there together. It | |
was cold, the floor was cement, it was not heated. I was wearing a | |
winter jacket, but Dima was wearing a light jacket and wellies,” | |
Vasyl, who was released after eight days, said. | |
When they didn’t come home, Halyna said she was beside herself, | |
realizing the Russians must have captured them. “They grabbed a lot | |
of people back then, they grabbed whomever they saw. Those they did not | |
need, they tortured a little and let them go. But Dima and six other | |
people have been in prison for two years,” she said, tears in her | |
eyes. | |
Russia has become such a black hole for information that many Ukrainian | |
families, authorities and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) must | |
rely on word of mouth from former prisoners to learn about people who | |
are still detained. | |
Anastasiia Pantielieieva, a researcher and journalist who documents | |
cases of civilian detentions and enforced disappearances for the , a | |
Ukrainian NGO, said that, based on eyewitness testimonies, Dima was | |
briefly held in two makeshift detention centers in occupied Ukraine | |
before being moved to a pre-trial detention center in Novozybkov, in | |
Russia’s Bryansk region. | |
She said the last documented sighting of Dima by a witness was at Penal | |
Colony Number 7 in Russia’s Vladimir region. At one point, MIHR | |
received indication that he might be transported to another facility in | |
Mordovia, a Russian region southeast of Moscow, but Pantielieieva said | |
Russian authorities did not confirm this information. | |
Moscow has repeatedly denied holding Dima, despite numerous accounts | |
placing him in detention facilities in Russia. The Russian | |
Investigative Committee and the Russian Prison Service in Bryansk both | |
officially informed the Khyliuks’ lawyer in December 2022 and January | |
2023 that he was not in Russia and that they had no information about | |
him. | |
Dima’s handwritten note was dated April 2022, although his parents | |
did not receive it until August that year. Then in May 2023, the | |
Khyliuks said the ICRC called them to confirm their son was alive. But | |
it wasn’t until this March, two years after his arrest, that the | |
Russian Ministry of Defense admitted Dima had been detained and was | |
being held in Russia, in a letter to his parents. They did not provide | |
any information on his location or status. | |
“We’ve had cases where even people who are put on trials, public | |
trials, where we have seen photos from the courtroom, even in these | |
cases, the relatives would have no official documents, nothing that | |
would officially confirm that the people are on the territory of | |
Russian Federation,” Pantielieieva said. | |
Under international humanitarian law, in times of conflict, the must | |
be given regular access to detainees to verify they are being treated | |
humanely and to reconnect them with their families. The person must | |
also be told why they are being interned and be able to appeal the | |
decision. | |
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence officials told CNN that they believe the | |
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Russian National Guard | |
are the primary drivers behind the arrests and detentions of Ukrainian | |
civilians. Neither responded to CNN’s requests for comment. | |
CNN also made multiple requests to the Russian ministries of defense | |
and interior, the Russian ombudsman’s office, the Directorate of | |
Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation and the | |
Main Directorate of the General Staff (GRU) for information about the | |
specific cases mentioned in this story. They have not replied. | |
Held secretly for months | |
For the families of detainees, trying to navigate Russia’s security | |
apparatus is a part of their nightmare. | |
Yulia Khrypun has spent more than two years reaching out to every | |
Russian authority she could think of, desperately trying to find | |
information about her father Serhii. When she did receive official | |
replies, they often included conflicting information. “One | |
institution officially informed me that he was detained for resisting | |
the ‘special military operation,’ while others said that he never | |
crossed the border into Russia,” she said. CNN has seen some of the | |
documents sent to her. | |
Serhii Khrypun was detained in Nove, a village near Tokmak, in southern | |
Ukraine, where he was working as a security guard at a farm. The area | |
had been under occupation for about two weeks when, one morning in | |
March 2022, Serhii called Yulia to tell her that a new group of Russian | |
soldiers had arrived in two trucks. | |
“And that was our last phone conversation. After that we had no | |
information about him for two days,” she said. “It seems to me that | |
at that moment he already knew that he would be taken away. He called | |
everyone: me, his mother and sister, and his friend.” | |
Yulia was able to piece together what happened because Serhii’s | |
arrest was filmed on a security camera at the farm; she said it looked | |
a lot like kidnapping. When the Russian soldiers arrived, they searched | |
him and his colleague before proceeding to undress them, the video | |
showed. “After that, they put a bag over his head and took him | |
away,” she said. | |
Yulia was told by Ukrainians taken to the same facility as her father� | |
– a government building in Tokmak – that he was held there for | |
about two weeks. They also said they were beaten by Russian troops. | |
“He was then taken to Melitopol, where they kept him for three weeks, | |
then to Olenivka, and from there to Kursk (in Russia), then to | |
Crimea,” she said, citing what she has heard from various | |
eyewitnesses who were held with her father. One of them contacted her | |
after his release, knowing only her name and place of work from Serhii. | |
Others were interviewed by NGOs or Ukrainian authorities. Based on | |
these accounts, she believes her father is now being held in a | |
detention facility in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, a city in Russia’s Rostov | |
region near the Ukrainian border. | |
Russia is holding so many Ukrainian detainees that it has had to extend | |
several existing prisons and pre-trial detention facilities to | |
accommodate them. According to the Ukrainian ombudsman’s office, one | |
such facility has been created in Chonhar, at the Russian-occupied | |
southernmost tip of the Kherson region, next to a bridge to the | |
Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. | |
The FSB and other Russian security agencies have conducted a in | |
Crimea since Russia illegally annexed the peninsula in 2014, targeting | |
political opponents, pro-Ukrainian and pro-democracy activists, human | |
rights defenders, journalists and Crimean Tatars. Those detained | |
include people with no links to opposition or activism. | |
The pre-trial detention center, or SIZO, in Simferopol, has become | |
synonymous with the Russian campaign of terror in Crimea. According to | |
Crimean human rights organizations including Zmina, the Crimean Human | |
Rights Group and Crimea SOS, hundreds of people have been held in the | |
facility for months, without anyone knowing where they were. | |
Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia opened a second | |
pre-trial detention facility in Simferopol, SIZO No. 2. But that was | |
apparently not enough to hold all detainees. Satellite images from | |
Maxar Technologies taken in July 2021 and November 2023 reveal the | |
transformation of a school campus in Chonhar from an ordinary building | |
to a . A new security perimeter with high walls has been erected | |
around the compound, with a controlled access point visible in the more | |
recent images. | |
MIHR has compiled a database of facilities where Ukrainian civilians | |
are being detained, confirmed through eyewitness testimonies from | |
people held at the same locations and, in some cases, official | |
documents. They include prisons, penal colonies and pre-trial detention | |
centers as far away as Russia’s Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk regions, | |
thousands of miles from Ukraine in Siberia. | |
‘She was essentially kidnapped’ | |
The family of former police officer Mariana Checheliuk has been trying | |
to track the 24-year-old’s movements across Russia and occupied | |
Ukraine for the past two years. Since her detention, she is believed to | |
have been relocated at least six times. | |
Mariana and her younger sister were among the hundreds of civilians who | |
spent weeks sheltering in the in Mariupol during Russia’s siege of | |
the southern port city. They were finally allowed to leave in May 2022, | |
when Russia and Ukraine agreed to open a humanitarian corridor into the | |
Ukrainian-held city of Zaporizhzhia. | |
On the way, Mariana was detained at a Russian “filtration point” in | |
the occupied village of Bezimenne, according to her mother, Natalia | |
Checheliuk. The became notorious in the early months of the war. | |
Tens of thousands of evacuees from Mariupol were forced to go through a | |
“security” screening there. Many never made it out. | |
“She was essentially kidnapped,” Natalia told CNN. | |
“There were no court hearings, she has not been charged with anything | |
and we even received an email from the (self-proclaimed Donetsk | |
People’s Republic) prosecutor saying that they have absolutely no | |
claims against Mariana, that she is not accused of anything and that | |
they ‘will check and release her,’” Natalia said. “But this was | |
eight months ago, and nothing has happened.” | |
According to eyewitnesses who were held alongside Mariana and who spoke | |
to her family, she was first taken to a detention facility in Donetsk, | |
in occupied eastern Ukraine. She was then transferred to Olenivka, the | |
detention center where in a mysterious explosion in July 2022. | |
From Olenivka she was taken to a detention facility in Taganrog, in | |
southwestern Russia, and then to Kamyshin, in Russia’s Volgograd | |
region. From there, she was sent back to Taganrog and then to a | |
detention facility in Mariupol, where – as far as the family knows, | |
and as human rights groups and Ukrainian officials have reported – | |
she remains to this day. | |
“My daughter went through a lot of grief,” Natalia said. “In a | |
letter in December 2023, she wrote that she was giving up, that she had | |
lost her faith … Every day, all day, all I think about is her.” | |
Before the war, Mariana – or Marianochka, as her family calls her – | |
was an animal welfare volunteer, who would often get up early to | |
prepare and deliver food for vulnerable dogs before heading to work | |
with the police. She adopted a rescue dog called Mila, who is now | |
staying with her family. | |
Eyewitnesses have told her family that the detention has taken a great | |
toll on her. One Ukrainian woman who was held in the pre-trial | |
detention center in Taganrog in May 2023 told CNN that Mariana had lost | |
weight and was in poor health the last time she saw her. | |
She said Mariana had problems with her knee following an injury in | |
Olenivka and that conditions in the prison were dire. | |
“The food was terrible, as was the attitude of the guards, who | |
(inflicted) psychological and physical abuse on us. We were often | |
forced to do push-ups, sit in splits, do squats and other physical | |
exercises,” she said. | |
“Sometimes we could do physical exercises, sing Russian songs and the | |
national anthem of the Russian Federation all day, (the guards) were | |
threatening to send us to Siberia or other places … telling us that | |
Ukraine no longer exists, that Ukraine does not want to take prisoners | |
of war back, that no one wants us.” | |
The prisoner, who has since been released, asked CNN not to disclose | |
her name for fear of retribution. | |
According to the ICRC, Russia considers Mariana to be a prisoner of war | |
because she was formerly a police officer, Natalia said. However, the | |
Ukrainian government told the family she is considered a civilian and, | |
as such, cannot be exchanged. | |
Pantielieieva, the MIHR researcher, said she believes Russia would take | |
advantage of any decision to recognize civilians as prisoners of war | |
and detain even more. “The number of people they are taking is | |
already great, they are doing it every day,” she said, adding that | |
the latest case of a “disappeared” civilian had landed on her desk | |
just a few days earlier. | |
Volunteers, journalists and teachers are among those Russia has | |
appeared interested in detaining, according to the human rights groups | |
monitoring the arrests, but often there is no discernable reason why | |
someone has been scooped up. “Some people were taken because their | |
house was not far from Russian positions. Or maybe they had a video of | |
(Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky on their phones. Or the | |
Russians were interested in their relatives and took them hostage,” | |
Pantielieieva said. | |
“We have examples where a person is detained by one soldier and after | |
a month, another soldier comes in on rotation and becomes responsible | |
for the detainees and he doesn’t know why people were detained and he | |
goes and asks the detainees why they were being held.” | |
‘I don’t know how to change this’ | |
Ukraine has managed to bring hundreds of soldiers home in prisoner | |
swaps with Russia and has even had some success repatriating Ukrainian | |
children who were forcibly deported – leaning on Qatar and the United | |
Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to help mediate the process. | |
Detained civilians, however, are stuck in limbo. Only a few dozen have | |
been released so far, Lubinets, Ukraine’s human rights commissioner,� | |
told CNN. “We don’t have a legal mechanism, we don’t have a | |
partner, we don’t have international laws, international norms … I | |
don’t know how to change this situation,” he said. | |
Ukraine’s government has admitted it was not prepared to handle the | |
situation of civilians being held without end, but that they now have | |
some systems in place to support families. | |
Yulia, whose father Serhii is still missing, said she realized early on | |
that the international legal system was not set up to deal with cases | |
like his. | |
“The process was clear with POWs, because for them there is a | |
military unit, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and Ukraine’s | |
Coordination Headquarters (for the Treatment of Prisoners of War). But | |
with civilians, there were different phone numbers, the Ministry of | |
Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the hotline of the | |
National Information Bureau, the ombudsman, the Ministry of | |
Reintegration … it was a circle of hell,” she said. | |
After months of reaching dead-ends, Yulia and another relative of a | |
Ukrainian detainee set up the civic organization “Civilians in | |
Captivity” to give them more authority when speaking to officials. | |
The group – which has united the families of some 400 detained | |
civilians – has become a key player in raising awareness and holds | |
regular meetings with the Coordination Headquarters and the | |
ombudsman’s office. | |
“Everyone knows about the POWs, but few people talk about civilians | |
in captivity,” Yulia said, adding that she sometimes feels frustrated | |
about the Ukrainian government’s decision not to acknowledge civilian | |
detainees as prisoners of war, as Russia has demanded. | |
“As a daughter who has been waiting for her father for two years, I | |
do not understand why my father should pay with his life and health,” | |
she said. | |
Lubinets said he understands that frustration. “But what can you do | |
with (a) country that does not respect international humanitarian law | |
and is not held responsible for it? The Geneva Conventions say that no | |
side in international armed conflict can detain the civilian | |
population. But Russia? They did it and they continue doing it.” | |
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