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Lost in the Gray Zone: How Russia Secretly Disappears Thousands of Ukrainian Civilians
Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Ukrainian civilians in the occupied territories have vanished into thin air. These “ghost prisoners” are whisked away by the occupying forces to informal places of detention, where they’re held outside any legal framework and tortured. Some are then transferred to the Russian prison system, where they languish without charges or serve trumped-up sentences. Forbidden Stories and its partners unveil this opaque system designed to break down Ukrainian society.
A door leading to a hole in a basement is visible in a restaurant in Snihurivka, a town in the Ukranian region of Mykolaiv (November 23, 2022). Residents say it was used as a torture site by Russian forces during their months-long occupation of the area (Chris McGrath/Getty Images).
- According to Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman, between 16,000 and 20,000 civilians are currently held by the Russians. By definition, counting secret prisoners is nearly impossible, and so far, few authorities have dared to give an exact figure, but we have chosen to retain the ombudsman’s data, which reflect the extent of the situation.
- “Torture chambers” have been set up in the occupied territories since 2022.
- Forbidden Stories has identified 29 Russian detention facilities where torture is systematic, out of the alleged 186 locations where Ukrainian civilians are held.
Our investigation also reveals details about the authorities at Taganrog, known as “Russia’s Guantanamo.”
By Guillaume Vénétitay, with Tetiana Pryimachuk
April 29, 2025
Five minutes of continuous blows. “They didn’t even give me time to turn my head. The Russians didn’t say anything. They just kept hitting me.”
By the time the onslaught was over, Vitaliy* had no strength left. His fellow prisoners helped him clean his face, which was coated in blood. After a pause, his jailers returned. They put a bag over his head, lay him on the floor, and tied him up.
“They connected wires to my legs. I don’t know how long it lasted. They shocked me with electricity,” Vitaliy said calmly, sitting at Puri Chveni, a Georgian restaurant in the city of Zaporizhzhia. He didn’t order anything to eat or drink. The former mechanic remains, if not only physically, an emotionally wounded man. While he remembers the details of his imprisonment, he still has to summon his courage each time he speaks of it out loud.
Vitaliy remembers every detail of the day he was detained: July 27, 2022. On that late summer day, Russians showed up at his service station in the occupied Ukrainian city of Melitopol. They beat him, asked him whether he knew anyone from the Ukrainian army, and took him away. Vitaliy was first sent to a location known as “the garages”—a vacant industrial premise used by the occupiers to torture Ukrainians—where he was subjected to electric shocks. Vitaliy was then transferred to another detention center with miserable conditions for almost two months. There, he was denied contact with relatives or a lawyer, but ultimately, no charges were brought against him. He was liberated on the evening of September 22, 2022. He has since fled the occupied territories.
Rally in support of civilian prisoners in Kontraktova Square, Kyiv – April 12th, 2025 (Credit: Gulliver Cragg / France 24)
Like Vitaliy, thousands of civilians have been illegally abducted and held in secret since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Mikhail Savva, an expert at the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL)—a Nobel Prize-winning Ukrainian human rights NGO—explained: “Very often, they have the status of ‘incommunicado,’ meaning that they are unofficially picked up and thrown into basements. They are beaten, tortured, and forced to testify.” Then, they are totally cut off from the outside world.
These “ghost prisoners” had become an obsession for Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist. Viktoriia vanished on August 3, 2023, while investigating secret detention centers in the triangle between Melitopol, Enerhodar, and Berdiansk, three cities in the occupied southeast of the country. She herself was caught up in this opaque system. Viktoriia was imprisoned for over a year, including for at least eight months in Taganrog on the other side of the border in Russian territory, before being declared dead in October 2024 by the Russian Ministry of Defence.
Forbidden Stories, whose mission is to continue the work of reporters who have been killed, imprisoned, or silenced, launched an investigation as soon as news of her death broke. Alongside 12 media partners, we spent three months investigating Russia’s systematic detention and torture of Ukrainian civilians.
“It’s most likely the FSB”
Illegal detention tends to begin in the same way as it did for Vitaliy. The captors are almost always hooded and dressed without distinguishing marks, often with machine guns slung over their shoulders. It was around 9 a.m. on August 24, 2022—Ukraine’s Independence Day—when Maksym Ivanov saw a group of Russian gunmen arrive in a Renault Duster. The 28-year-old landscaper was stopped while handing out pro-Ukrainian flyers with his partner, Tatyana Bekh, in downtown Melitopol.
“They put me on the ground, searched my backpack, and looked through my phone,” recalled the young man. Handcuffed, the pair was taken to the police station on Chernyshevskogo Street. Ivanov didn’t back down during the interrogation by two Russians “in T-shirts, berets and balaclavas.” He told them they “have no right to occupy Ukraine.” His guards reacted by beating his ribs and face.
Although it’s hard to prove, locals believe that Russian intelligence officers are involved in these actions. “It’s most likely the FSB,” said Savva from the CCL, referring to Russia’s Federal Security Service. “But that’s not always the case. They hide their identity. It could also be military counter-espionage.”
In its latest report, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, established by the United Nations Human Rights Council, also suggests the presence of “Russian armed forces” and the FSB in these kidnappings. But the lack of clarity about the exact identity of the kidnappers has hampered the families’ searches.
Olga* has moved heaven and earth to find the slightest trace of her husband, Alexander*, captured in December 2022 in their village north of Melitopol. “I appealed to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation from day one,” Olga, 55, told Forbidden Stories. “I contacted the FSB twice and was told that he was not detained and that there were no charges against him. I wrote to the Russian Ministry of Defence eight times, who replied for the first time in March 2024.”
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“A torture machine”
As their families try to piece together the sparse clues about their loved ones, the prisoners are broken during their detention. It wasn’t just the torture, Vitaliy said: the living conditions were also deplorable. Vitaliy describes the cell he was detained in, in “the garages,” as a 10-by-5-meter room with an empty metal shelf, three or four old wooden doors atop which were several worn blankets and a sagging sofa. For a toilet, a bucket had been placed in the corner.
“We slept on this sofa and these doors,” Vitaliy said. The next detention center in Melitopol wasn’t much better; the cell was located in a half-basement, with a sink that didn’t work and no access to a shower.
Add to this the daily torture sessions. “There were Russians who were specifically in charge of this,” said Petro*, who was held for a month in “the garages.” “As soon as they played very loud music, it meant they were starting to torture. And even with the sound, I heard my cellmate screaming and begging them to stop.”
Inhabitants of the occupied territories came up with a name for the cells where torture took place: “torture chambers.”
Alice Edwards, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Credit: Joachim Bartz / ZDF)
“Torture is inseparable from interrogation, and the FSB becomes violent in order to obtain a confession,” a European security source told a member of the Forbidden Stories consortium.
Once a confession has been obtained under torture, some are released. Others are nonetheless transferred to the official Russian prison system, where they remain “ghost prisoners,” nearly impossible to locate or contact. In rarer cases, Ukrainian civilians are hit with trumped-up charges such as terrorism or sabotage.
Admission to an official penal colony or pre-trial detention center recognized by Moscow is far from a return to normality for these prisoners—quite the contrary. “Russia operates a torture machine,” Alice Jill Edwards, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, told Forbidden Stories. “It’s an institutionalized practice inside and outside the country.”
The Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and the CCL have identified 186 locations where Ukrainian civilians and soldiers are confined, both in Russia and the occupied territories. Of these, Forbidden Stories and its partners identified at least 29 where torture and ill-treatment are systematic. Detention center number 2 (or SIZO-2) in Taganrog is known to be one of the worst. It was here that, at the end of December 2023, journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna found herself.
Map of the 29 detention centers where Ukrainian civilians have been tortured in Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine, as identified by Forbidden Stories and its partners. (Credit: Forbidden Stories)
A unique form of brutality
“A new Ukrainian whore has arrived and we’re going to fuck her.”
These were the words with which Yelyzaveta Shylyk was greeted on the morning of January 31, 2023, the day of her arrival in Taganrog. Before insulting her, the guards had undressed her and filmed her from every angle. When they put her hands behind her back to take her to the cell, one of the guards told her, “Get ready, we’re going to show you all the delights of life.”
Her escort hit her in the side, then on the legs, back, shoulder blades, and arms with a metal stick.
“I was stunned,” Shylyk, a former member of the Ukrainian army’s Aidar battalion who had hung up her uniform two months before her arrest, said.
According to our investigation, hundreds of Ukrainians, both prisoners of war and civilians, have gone through SIZO-2 since the beginning of the Russian invasion. For years, this pre-trial detention center in Taganrog, a Russian town in the Rostov region and bordered by the Azov Sea, held minors and women with children. Despite its light green facade, it is a grim-looking facility with barbed wire, brick buildings, and a faded perimeter wall. After its invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) chose to turn this detention center into a torture factory of sorts, expanding into a facility capable of absorbing a growing number of captives.
“Taganrog is one of the worst places I’ve ever been,” Julian Pylypei, a former marine who was held for one month in SIZO-2, said.
The SIZO-2 in Taganrog in a photo taken before it held Ukrainian civilians. (Credits: GUFSIN press service in Rostov; Yandex Maps)
For Pylypei, who in his 30 months of capture was shuffled between six different prisons, SIZO-2 stood out for its unique form of brutality. Twice a day, “the guards come by and beat you up with anything they can,” he said. “I’ve been tasered, beaten all over—on my arms, my ribs—and strangled.”
“Russia’s Guantanamo”
The inner workings of Taganrog and the FSIN are a black box, nearly impossible to investigate.
Two Russian human rights defenders, who requested anonymity as they continue to work in Russia, told Forbidden Stories that the FSIN took extra steps to hide or delete prison statistics after the invasion in an attempt to obfuscate any future investigations. “We don’t know anything about the people who work there or the facilities. Absolutely everything is hidden,” they said.
Faced with this black box, Forbidden Stories and its partners used satellite images to analyze Taganrog’s transformation into “Russia’s Guantanamo” in the months after the invasion. Footage obtained by the consortium reveals the installation of new metal roofs for several SIZO-2 buildings at the time of the arrival of the first Ukrainian prisoners, 89 fighters from the Azov regiment in Mariupol, in May 2022. According to those images, work on the building lasted until early January 2023.
A comparison of satellite images of Taganrog prison taken on July 15, 2022 (left image) and August 31, 2022 (left image) highlights the development of its infrastructure. (Credit: Maxar)
Despite the renovations, our investigation points to probable prison overcrowding. Before the invasion, SIZO-2 officially held 442 inmates, but procurement data obtained by the consortium suggests a substantial increase. The facility’s potato supply, for example, has more than quadrupled since November 2021. “Our cell was designed for three people. But there were six of us,” Pylypei noted.
Unmasking Taganrog’s hierarchy
Information obtained by Forbidden Stories and its partners from a Ukrainian intelligence source confirms the extent of the abuse experienced by Ukrainians detained in Taganrog. According to that source, a torture chamber was set up in the basement of SIZO-2. Among the worst methods employed were electric taser shocks to a wet body, “slow” suffocation with a gas mask, naked detention in a cage with a dog, and sub-zero temperatures. Fifteen people appear to have died from torture and beatings, as of fall 2024, according to Ukrainian intelligence. “Twice I was put in a chair and shocked with 380 volts, with clamps fixed between my wet toes,” Shylyk, the former Aidar fighter, said.
Shylyk’s torturers had no names or faces and regularly used masks and nicknames. Despite this, our consortium can reveal the identities of several members of the SIZO-2 hierarchy. They include Alexander Shtoda, director of the Taganrog detention center; Andrey V. Mikhailichenko, his deputy; and Alexander Klyuykov, head of the Taganrog special department.
Alexander Klyuykov, head of the Taganrog special department (no photo available).
Andrey V. Mikhailichenko, his deputy
Alexander Shtoda, director of the Taganrog detention center
Special FSIN units were included among the torturers. With names like Grozny, Shark, Lynx, and Saturn, these units rotated between various prisons. Their aim: to break Ukrainians. “Our hierarchy told us outright, ‘you can do whatever you want,’” a former special forces member, who eventually deserted, said. “The violence was unrestrained, completely unchecked.”
None of the Russian officials solicited by the consortium – the Kremlin, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), as well as several Taganrog higher-ups – responded to our requests for comment.
“Initially, we heard that a special unit was going to the Bryansk region. I thought, ‘OK, maybe they’re being sent there to fight.’ I was categorically against that. But then I learned that they were going there to torture prisoners. Not just prisoners of wars, because only a small percentage of them were soldiers. The rest were civilians: people who had been kidnapped, brought into Russian territory, and subjected to horrific treatment.
“The whole chain—from the general and his deputy to the commander of the special forces unit, and then to the soldiers—told us we had ‘to work hard’ do everything possible. That was the euphemism; everyone understood what it meant. There would be no video recording of any violent actions. That was stated clearly. No documentation, no oversight. The violence was unbridled, totally uncontrolled. It was as if they were no longer in Russia and were free to do absolutely whatever they wanted. It wasn’t just psychological pressure. It was full-on deliberate destruction—from the special forces, from everyone involved.
“One anecdote stuck in my mind. An Azov prisoner was standing in the parade ground, and the boss was screaming at him. The prisoner said, ‘So, what should I do? Hang myself?’ And the boss replied, ‘Give the wretch a rope. Let him hang himself. And don’t call the doctors. Don’t open the cell. Just die, bitch.’”
In the meantime, the few Russian outsiders allowed to visit Taganrog repeat the same story. The conditions of detention of Ukrainians in SIZO-2 are “not so bad,” according to Igor Omelchenko, chairman of the Public Monitoring Committee (PMC), an organization supposed to strengthen the public oversight of places of detention.
But for those who have been released, the memory of SIZO-2 is still sharp and painful. Mykhailo Chaplya, held for 22 months at SIZO-2, showed us his scarred hands. The guards would ask him to keep them against the wall, then hit them, creating gashes in his palms. “Everyone who comes out of Taganrog has these scars,” he said.
Meanwhile, the relatives of missing detainees have continued to frantically search for their loved ones. Among them is 32-year-old Anastasia Glukhovska, a journalist who worked for RIA Melitopol until the occupation of the Ukrainian city by Russian forces. Kidnapped on August 20, 2023, her family received no news of her for a year and a half until the Russian Red Cross counted her as a “prisoner of war” on February 26.
“A source told us she was in Taganrog until August,” her sister Diana said. Based on this, she would have crossed paths with Viktoriia. Glukhovska’s sister recounted the pain of a loved one’s absence: the unanswered letters, the guilt of not having done enough or having missed some key clues. “We’ve only received one document in a year and a half of captivity. That’s not normal,” Diana said. “My sister hasn’t done anything wrong. They’re only holding her because they want to.”
*First names have been changed at the request of the victims.