Ukrainian prisoners were tortured and abused: two more Russians were suspected of war crimes

With the assistance of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, law enforcement officers have identified two more Russian war criminals involved in the torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. They have been informed of their suspicion of committing war crimes, and the investigation is documenting new episodes of abuse.

This was reported by the press service of the GUR.

According to the GUR, under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General’s Office, operatives of the Criminal Investigation Department of the National Police and investigators of the Main Investigation Department of the SBU, with the help of journalists from the “Schemes” project, identified two individuals involved in the torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war. These are the doctor of colony No. 7, Vyacheslav Cherdantsev, nicknamed “Konoval”, and the convict Yaroslav Kirilov.

According to the investigation, since October 2022, the defendants have systematically tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war, used sexual violence, and cruelly humiliated human dignity. A case of rape of a prisoner of war with a foreign object and other episodes of abuse have also been documented.

The investigation established that the administration of colony No. 7 created a system of cruel treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, which involved the institution’s staff and individual convicts. According to law enforcement officials, the purpose of the torture was to break the prisoners’ will, force them to obtain citizenship of the aggressor state, and induce them to give false testimony.

The GUR reported that during the investigation, other forms of torture were also identified, including beatings, the use of electric shocks, injections of unknown drugs, failure to provide medical care, and the deliberate creation of unsanitary conditions of detention.

According to the investigation, Vyacheslav Cherdantsev personally mocked the prisoners, applied obscene inscriptions on their bodies and faces with a solution of diamond green, and also gave instructions to the guards to beat the prisoners of war. According to law enforcement officers, Yaroslav Kirilov, on the instructions of the colony administration, directly participated in torture and psychological terror.

The GUR emphasized that the documented facts of torture, inhuman treatment, and sexual violence are gross violations of the Geneva Conventions and, in accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, qualify as war crimes.

The intelligence service also recalled that earlier law enforcement officers had identified another Russian suspect in the case of torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war – Ilya Sorokin, a paramedic at correctional colony No. 10.

Previously, law enforcement officers reported in absentia suspicion to a former employee of the occupation police , who, together with Russian military personnel, tortured and sexually assaulted a resident of Novaya Kakhovka in the Kherson region.

As a reminder, the military counterintelligence of the Security Service of Ukraine, together with the State Bureau of Investigation and the Prosecutor General’s Office, collected evidence against a senior rifleman of the National Guard who, while in Russian captivity, abused other Ukrainian prisoners of war.

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