Possible torture of servicemen in Skelia: Ombudsman’s Office monitoring group heads for inspection

A monitoring group from the Ombudsman's Office will go to the site to verify information about possible torture of servicemen in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelia.

Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets reported this on social media, Censor.NET informs.

Torture and driving to suicide

According to Lubinets, the Ombudsman's Office has received alarming information that requires immediate procedural intervention by law enforcement agencies. The complaints and reports concern the internal situation in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelia.

In particular, they concern:

The alleged use of physical torture and psychological violence against soldiers;
The unlawful arrangement of closed places of detention on the unit's premises;
Cases of systematic pressure that may have led to driving active servicemen to suicide.

"I am not leaving this without attention. My position is clear: any human rights violations, especially under martial law, are unacceptable and require an immediate response. Therefore, I urgently appealed to the State Bureau of Investigation and the Specialized Defense Prosecutor's Office with a demand to conduct a full, objective, and impartial investigation," Lubinets emphasized.

Conversation with Syrskyi

According to the ombudsman, he also held a working meeting with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Oleksandr Syrskyi, to whom the 425th Regiment is directly subordinated. Lubinets thanked him "for his prompt response," as the Military Law Enforcement Service is reportedly already working to establish the circumstances.

"Tomorrow [June 25], a monitoring group from the Ombudsman's Office is going to the site to conduct an inspection. I have received assurances of full assistance to its work as an independent monitoring group. Not a single fact of a possible human rights violation should remain without proper legal assessment!" Lubinets added.

What Babel's article says

On June 23, Babel reported that from the end of 2025 to spring 2026, at least 26 recruits of the 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelia had died. The journalists said most of the men who died had not spent even a month in the regiment. The official cause of death in most cases was pneumonia.
For the article, journalists interviewed more than 30 witnesses. One of them, Oleksandr Zhykin, spoke about the "Kuriatnyk," the informal name of Skelia's distribution point, which is the first location for newly arrived mobilized men. The man ended up there after he was registered as absent without leave when he went to get pills for substitution therapy for drug addiction.
Another anonymous source spoke about punishment cells where servicemen were sent for refusing to carry out various orders.
For its part, the Skelia Regiment commented on the non-combat deaths of recruits and assured that it was cooperating with the investigation. Skelia believes that the authors of the article make "generalizations that reduce the history of the unit to individual tragic cases." The regiment claims that 18 of the 26 deaths mentioned in the article occurred in the hospital or on the way there, and that their causes were related to "illnesses or the generally poor health of the mobilized men."
Earlier, the SBI had already announced that it had launched a check into alleged violations in Skelia, which are being investigated as abuse of authority or official powers committed under martial law and causing grave consequences.