Russia is torturing its Ukrainian captives
“Worse than the worst horror film” says the former mayor of Kherson
VOLODYMYR MYKOLAYENKO is 65, but looks ten years older. A former mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kherson, he was detained by Russian forces during their eight-month occupation in 2022. Freed at the end of August, he is now giving interviews from a hospital in Kyiv. And that is refocusing attention on what the UN’s human-rights mission in the capital calls Russia’s “systematic and widespread” torture and ill-treatment of its prisoners.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Systematic and widespread torture”
From the October 11th 2025 edition
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