Beatings, starvation and torture: the hell of a Ukrainian doctor in a Russian prison

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Incessant beatings, physical and psychological torture, hunger, overcrowding and deprivation of health care. It is the hell that volunteer doctor Yulia Paievska suffered during her three months of imprisonment in a Russian detention center.

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“In my case me tortured with electric shocks“, he claims.

“In general, the physical violence was constant and arbitrary. They hit us for whatever reason with any tubes they had,” the Ukrainian doctor tells EFE, her voice breaking.

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Paievska, 53, visited Vienna to recount her months of imprisonment to representatives of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and thus denounce the inhumane treatment received by Ukrainian prisoners in Russian hands.

The volunteer, known in Ukraine by the nickname “Taira”, a character from the video game World of Warcraft, is known in her country. In 2014 you founded a group of volunteer doctors, called Los Ángeles de Taira, which takes care of the wounded in Donbas.

Between 2018 and 2020 it was head of a military hospital in Mariupol and later continued to work as a volunteer. After the Russian invasion of February 24 and the siege of Mariupol, he helped civilians flee the city under constant bombardment.

terrifying conditions

In her three months of captivity – she was captured on March 16 – in the occupied Donetsk region, she was not even able to communicate with her husband and daughter. Her release on June 17, transformed into a symbol of resistance, was announced by the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky.

Paievska told EFE she was locked up in solitary confinement and for ten days he was deprived of his medicines for the thyroid. Subsequently, she had to share a cell measuring just 12 square meters with 21 other women.

There were only ten beds and guards prevented them from sitting or resting during the day. Physical violence was constant.

“When someone got sick in our cell, we had a difficult time because we knew that if anyone came in they would hit,” he says.

Paievska explains that the conditions in the centers where she was found were appalling, that they lacked proper warm clothing and that patients received no treatment any doctor.

And she recounts the case of two women who survived a heart attack despite the only thing they got back was being allowed to sit.

The hygienic conditions were also deplorable: “In three months I was only able to shower once“, invoice.

“When the women showered, it was in full view of the male guards. This was enormously humiliating for many and affected them psychologically,” she adds.

paevska lost more than 15 kilos for lack of food. Even basic hygiene products were missing: “They didn’t give us toothpaste, or a toothbrush, nothing. They didn’t even give us towels,” he complains.

Many of his colleagues suffered psychological problems as a result of the situation: “They were constantly trying to humiliate us,” he says, explaining that they always made them sing the Russian anthem or pro-Russian slogans or insulted them by saying that they were “Nazis” and “fascists”..

It was a way to “dehumanize” them, he says, and explains that he can’t tell many more details for fear of harming the prisoners who are still in Russian hands.

Nor the Red Cross and the UN

Paievska denounces that neither the Red Cross, nor the UN, nor any international organization have been able to do so enter Russian detention centers in occupied areas of Ukraine and calls on the international community to increase pressure on Russia.

The volunteer knows that being a well-known person and having released some images of her work before her capture allowed her to enter into a prisoner exchange.

The day before she was arrested, Paievska handed over a memory card, with more than 200GB on it. images documenting his workwitnessing all manner of injuries, including two US News Agency reporters Associated press which came out of Mariupol.

Paievska trusts those responsible for this inhumane treatment can be held responsible before the Ukrainian justice in the future.

“If these crimes are not punished, they will be committed again. It is in everyone’s interest that these behaviors are punished,” he says.

His story and experiences coincide with the allegations that the UN has made about the mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners in Russian detention centers.

On Tuesday, a mission of United Nations human rights monitors working in Ukraine corroborated “with a considerable margin of certainty” a series of tortures by Russian forces and their allies, through methods including electric shocks, beatings, or burns.

UN experts say that although there is torture of prisoners on both sides, those of the The Russian side has a “systematic” character..

Source: EFE

Source: Clarin

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