A network of camps Journalists uncover details of Ukrainian prisoners being tortured hundreds of miles deep in Russia

Russia has created a network of prisons and pre-trial detention centers (SIZOs) to hold Ukrainian captives. As of April 2025, human rights advocates were aware of more than 180 detention facilities where the Russian authorities are holding captured Ukrainian nationals: 90 of these are located across Russia, from regions bordering Ukraine to the Far East, while the rest are in occupied Ukrainian territories. According to investigations by leading international media outlets collaborating with the Viktoriia Project, inmates are regularly beaten, tortured, and abused in at least 29 of these facilities. Former prisoners told Ukrainska Pravda about one such facility: penitentiary IK-10 in Mordovia. Meduza recaps these findings.

Sources who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda said Ukrainian captives are held at IK-10 in conditions similar to those found in one of Russia’s most notorious torture facilities for Ukrainians: SIZO-2 in Taganrog. Ukraine’s intelligence community has collected evidence showing that at least three prisoners have died at IK-10 due to constant beatings and the lack of medical care.

The prison has devised roughly 40 different types of torture. In addition to inaugural beatings during prisoners’ “intake” and at daily cell inspections, staff at IK-10 torture inmates through forced physical exertion. Prisoners are ordered to run in place for hours, perform 1,000 to 2,000 squats, or walk in a crouch.

“There were officers who came for inspections, and they joined in the beatings. You weren’t allowed to sit. You weren’t allowed to speak… It was pretty cold outside, and all you had on were underwear and a ‘glass robe’ [likely referring to fiberglass clothing]. We constantly tried to huddle together to stay warm, but even that wasn’t allowed,” recounted a former prisoner identified as Serhii.

Prisoners were also beaten for speaking to one another, according to former inmates. “Violators” were forced to extend their arms through the food slot in the cell door and suffer beatings with batons, wooden sticks, and keys. Serhii told journalists that a guard once cracked an inmate’s head open with a soup ladle, and the next 10 cells got their meals in bowls stained with blood.

In their cells, prisoners were forbidden from using the toilet without permission and were not allowed to sit or lie down. Serhii shared a cell with five other men. For two weeks, they were given just one-tenth of a bar of soap. “We calculated once that we got 13 grams [less than half an ounce] of soap for the whole cell for a week. That’s not even enough to wash your hands once a day. And the only disinfectant they gave us was bleach. So the guys would clean their wounds with bleach as an antiseptic. You’d give yourself a chemical burn, but at least it would kill the infection,” the former inmate explained.

Nearly all the guards at IK-10 concealed their faces behind balaclavas or medical masks. The prisoners didn’t know their names or ranks. They nicknamed one of the guards “Katyusha” because he forced them to sing the Soviet song of the same name dozens of times a day. “We might do it up to 40 times between breakfast and lunch. He wanted all 11 cells to sing it loudly and in sync. It was clear he took pleasure in it and felt proud of what he was doing,” recalled Serhii.

According to Ukrainska Pravda’s sources in Ukrainian intelligence, at least two units from Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service could be involved in torturing Ukrainian prisoners at IK-10: “Typhoon” based in St. Petersburg and “Lynx” in Tver. There is also reportedly evidence linking special forces from Russia’s Far East to the prison.

The total number of Ukrainians held in Russian captivity is unknown. In December 2024, Kyiv reported that more than 16,000 civilians from Ukraine might be imprisoned in Russia. On May 1, President Zelensky’s administration stated that about 8,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war were also being held. In exchanges, Russia has also returned individuals who were officially listed as missing. According to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, as of fall 2024, around 50,000 people fall into this category.