Russians shot dead 245 Ukrainian soldiers who had surrendered. Another 206 soldiers died in Russian captivity, - AP
Of the more than five thousand Ukrainian prisoners of war repatriated by Russia to Ukraine, at least 206 died in captivity (including more than fifty as a result of the explosion in Olenivka). Another 245 prisoners were killed by Russian soldiers on the battlefield.
According to Censor.NET, this was reported by the AP agency with reference to official Ukrainian data.
AP journalists investigated the fate of 59-year-old Ukrainian soldier Serhii Hryhoriev, whose Russian death certificate lists a stroke as the cause of his death.
"But a Ukrainian autopsy and a former POW who was detained with him tell a different story about how he died – one of violence and medical neglect," the article says.
"But the Ukrainian autopsy and the former prisoner of war who was held with him tell a different story about how he died - a story of violence and medical negligence," the article says.
Together with Hryhoriev, 48-year-old prisoner of war Oleksii Honcharov was held in the Kamensk-Shakhtyn colony in the Rostov region of the Russian Federation, and he managed to survive.
"Everyone got hit -- no exceptions. Some more, some less, but we all took it. Toward the end, I could barely walk," Honcharov said, adding that requests for medical assistance were ignored.
A UN report in 2024 stated that 95 per cent of released Ukrainian prisoners of war had been subjected to "systematic" torture. Prisoners described beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, sexual violence, prolonged stress positions, mock executions, and sleep deprivation.
The report also notes that some Russian prisoners of war were ill-treated by the Ukrainian military during their first capture. But the abuse stopped as soon as the Russian prisoners of war were transferred to official Ukrainian detention centres, the report said.
Earlier this year, Amnesty International documented widespread torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia. The report was particularly critical of Russia's concealment of the whereabouts and condition of prisoners of war, noting that Russia refuses to allow human rights groups or medical professionals access to its prisons, leaving families in the dark for months or years about their loved ones.
