Beatings, water deprivation torture, and brutal reprisals: how Skelia Regiment treats soldiers in AWOL - Slidstvo.Info. PHOTO

Journalists have revealed facts of torture and beatings of servicemen in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skelia". It involves 3 cases of abuse of soldiers who tried to go AWOL.

This is stated in the investigation by the Slidstvo.Info agency, Censor.NET reports.

Death in an outhouse: Oleksandr Zavalov

One of the investigation's stories involves the death of 30-year-old Oleksandr Zavalov. The young man, who had previously undergone rehabilitation and did not have identity documents with him, was detained by TCR & SS in Odesa and sent to Skelia. There he underwent basic military training at a training ground in the Kirovohrad region.

From the training ground, Oleksandr called his mother in despair, saying: "Mom, I am in hell, pray for me." According to his mother, he was in a poor psychological state and was not provided with medical care.

On May 20, 2026, a group of six conscripts was brought under the escort of armed soldiers to the Administrative Services Centre to renew their passports. Zavalov tried to escape through the window of an outdoor outhouse. The escort, a Skelia soldier — 27-year-old Maksym Cherevan, previously convicted twice for theft — fired 4 rounds at him from a CZ Bren 2 assault rifle. One of them severed his pelvic artery, and the young man bled to death in a matter of minutes. Despite Cherevan's detention, the court never found out on what grounds a soldier previously convicted of a criminal offense was issued weapons in the rear, and who gave the order to escort people with assault rifles.

According to Lada Zavalova, representatives of TCR & SS informed her of her son's death by phone only five days after the incident. The woman told journalists that at first she was told her son had died of a hemorrhage, and when asked if he had been killed, the answer was negative. Only after clarifications, according to the mother, was she informed that the cause of death was a gunshot wound.

Torture and shooting at people: story of Arkadii Kukshyn

36-year-old Arkadii Kukshyn actually had an exemption from mobilization as a critical infrastructure employee and a student. Even before the start of the full-scale invasion, he was removed from the military register due to a criminal record. However, according to the investigation, after a forcible detention by TCR & SS in Kharkiv, he ended up at the Skelia training ground in the Sumy region.

He spoke of the inhumane training conditions: for a water bottle left behind by someone (by an instructor, Arkadii is convinced), hundreds of soldiers were punished with a ban on drinking for a day and a half, forced to run an obstacle course in full gear in the heat. People were forced to drink water from forest puddles.

Deciding to escape, on May 4, Arkadii passed through mine tripwires around the camp, but in a village, a Skelia patrol caught up with him and opened fire to kill. The man received two gunshot wounds to his arm and leg, but miraculously escaped. The bullet was later removed from his leg underground, as an official visit to a hospital threatened extradition to the Military Law Enforcement Service (MLES) and return to the regiment, where, Kukshyn is convinced, he would have simply been liquidated.

Arkadii also appealed to the SBI, sending them photos of his shot hands and legs. Instead, the State Bureau of Investigation sent Arkadii a summons for unauthorized abandonment of service (AWOL). As a result, Arkadii illegally crossed the border and fled to the Carpathians.

Blows with grenade launcher tubes: story of instructor Yurii

Former conscript and Skelia soldier Yurii said that the lawlessness at the brigade's Kharkiv training grounds has been going on for years. He shared that he served in this assault regiment for nine months in 2024, five of which — as an instructor.

The young man trained mostly convicted women and men who mobilized into Skelia from prison. According to him, commanders demanded that they beat their trainees (among whom were convicted women), and for the slightest mistakes, people were crippled in front of the training ground commander.

Skelia training ground commander Yevhen Harkusha, call sign Zheka / Photo: Babel

Thus, the training ground commander's brother knocked out a conscript's eye with a buttstock blow to the face, while Yurii himself was brutally beaten in the instructors' tent with an iron grenade launcher tube for allegedly poor training of shooters, having his teeth smashed and his head broken.

"At Skelia, everyone who runs away from them is called a drug addict. When I was at Skelia, I saw only one drug addict. I want to say that I am not a drug addict myself; I have never used drugs in my life, and I have a negative attitude toward them. I also want to continue serving in the military, but not with such freaks," the man said.

When Yurii tried to save himself through the Cherkasy Military Law Enforcement Service and filed statements with the SBI and the police, his beating case was simply ignored, and proceedings were never opened. Moreover, the soldier was tracked down and beaten a second time right in the middle of the street in Dnipro in front of his wife.

More than a year has passed, but after the statements filed and injuries documented, the case regarding the two beatings of Yurii by the same soldier from Skelia is not moving forward.

Allegations against "Skelia"

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.
A monitoring group from the Ombudsman’s Office said it would go to the site to verify information about possible torture of servicemen in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment "Skelia."
The 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelia confirms the deaths of 25 recruits.
Information about two thousand drug-addicted servicemen in the 425th Separate Assault Regiment Skelia is untrue.
Skelia also commented on the new information from the Babel publication about seven more of its servicemen who died during basic military training. The command emphasized that they are trying to "reduce to zero" non-combat losses.