The camp where Russia is suspected of torturing Ukrainians

2024-11-28 20:53:00, Kosova & Bota CNA

The camp where Russia is suspected of torturing Ukrainians

Russian Army filtering camp in Naroulia, Belarus, in early 2022.

A state building in Belarus was used by the Russian military to run an "infiltration" camp where multiple sources say Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were tortured and abused, a Radio Free Europe (REL) investigation has found.

The building controlled by the Belarusian government in the town of Naroulia, near the borders with Ukraine and Russia in the country's southeast, was one of many buildings where Russia searched civilians after it launched its full-scale occupation of Ukraine in February 2022.

Witness testimony and analysis of Planet Labs satellite footage and other footage from Russian television enabled REL and its partners to publicly reveal for the first time that Russian forces operated in Naroulia at the building of a company controlled by the Council of the Ministers of the authoritarian president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka.

While Lukashenka, who is an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has allowed Moscow to use Belarusian soil to transit transit forces and launch deadly attacks in Ukraine, he has not publicly acknowledged his government's role in the war of aggression. Russia.

But Yulia Polekhina, a lawyer from the Ukrainian human rights group Sich, said Lukashenka bears responsibility for the abuses that took place in the building used by Russia in Belarus.

"These filtering camps cannot be established without authorized government officials, who must give their consent for this," said Polekhina. "It is a war crime when people are beaten, tortured and denied medical care. And this cannot happen without the consent of the authorities".

Human rights activists have documented numerous cases of torture and forced transfers to Russia of Ukrainians who have passed through these camps, which Russia set up in both occupied Ukrainian territories and Belarus.

Such abuses were also committed in the Naroulia camp, according to Ukrainians who were sent there and their representatives.

"Civilians were beaten there. I mean, we heard constant screaming," said Bohdan Lysenko, a Ukrainian soldier who was sent to Naroulia was captured in March 2022.

Lukashenka did not respond to questions sent through his spokesman about the Naroulia camp.

"A large collective farm"

In late March 2022, about a month after Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Larysa Yahodynska's two sons were captured by the Russian military and sent to Belarus.

Yahodynska and her family are residents of the Ukrainian village of Orane, about 45 kilometers from the border with Belarus. At the time her sons were taken, the village, like other parts north of Kiev, was under Russian occupation.

"They said [my sons] were saboteurs and took them," Yahodynska told Ukrainian investigative journalism group Slidstvo.Info shortly after their detention.

Her youngest son, Vladyslav, was a minor when he was taken, but he managed to return home after being placed in an orphanage in Belarus. His older brother is believed to have been sent to Russia.

According to Yahodynska, Vladyslav was badly beaten while being held by Russian forces, while his older brother had broken ribs from being beaten with a baseball bat.

Vladyslav said that Russian soldiers put him and his brother in a van and took them to Belarus.

"There were border guards there, and I asked them [where we were]. They said: 'Belarus, Naroulia,'" Vladyslav recalled.

Vladyslav said the place where he was held after he arrived in Belarus resembled an abandoned Soviet-era collective farm. That description matched that given by a Ukrainian soldier captured by Russian forces around the same time as Vladyslav and his brother, but who later returned home thanks to a prisoner exchange.

"They closed our eyes. They transported us in a police van. And another friend we were with said he thought he heard the name 'Naroulia,'" said the soldier, who asked to remain anonymous.

He added that they were placed on "a large collective farm", where "there was a lot of equipment", including Soviet tanks and anti-aircraft guns.

Using data from Vladyslav and the Ukrainian soldier, reporters used Planet Labs satellite imagery to search for the Narouli camp where the two men may have been held./REL