“Please send me cigarettes”: this is how Putin’s soldiers live in the Ukrainian secret prison

Ukraine’s best-kept secret lies on the edge of a small village somewhere in the west of the country. Here, in a huge building with white walls and lots of rusty barbed wire, thousands of Russian soldiers are locked up. Prisoners of war, captured on the distant front, imprisoned indefinitely with the intention of eventually being exchanged for the Ukrainian fighters in the Russian camps.

The location of the only POW camp in Ukraine remains secret for security reasons. Petro Yatsenko (45) also does not want to reveal the exact number of prisoners: “There are far too many,” says the Ukrainian person responsible for the treatment of prisoners of war and quickly walks across the prison grounds. Russia has refused a new prisoner exchange for more than three months. “We will be full here in four weeks,” says Yatsenko. A second POW camp will soon be put into use.

The November cold is stinging, the nets on the football goals are blue and yellow, the prisoners are dressed entirely in blue and run silently through the garden with their hands folded behind their backs. Many hobble on crutches. Photos of the Klitschko brothers and ancient Ukrainian rulers hang on the walls of the prison. They are supposed to educate the Russians about the history of the country they wanted to liberate from an alleged Nazi government.

Chabi’s torture and no salt in the soup

Igor (32) is one of them. He sits in the heated TV room with about fifty other men. The only woman who ever ended up here was traded a year ago. “I was already in prison in Russia for murder,” says Igor with a millimeter cut and a mischievous look. He was promised freedom if he fought in Ukraine for six months. “So I came. I believed them about the Nazis. But I didn’t find any.”

At the back of the room sits Anton (26), an electrician from Siberia, who has been drafted against his will, he claims in a trembling voice. “I didn’t want this war. And to the families of those I killed, I want to say: I’m sorry.” Then wide-eyed Anton asks the reporter if he can give him something sweet, anything.

There is no dessert in the Ukrainian POW camp. Instead, traditional borscht – a soup –, pasta with meat and six slices of bread for lunch. The prisoners march into the dining room in shifts, grab aluminum spoons and plates and drink in silence. We eat together, the soup tastes bland. “No salt: this is the punishment for stealing Bakhmut from us,” says Petro Yatsenko with a wink. Of course you adhere to the dietary rules, he adds, mentioning for the umpteenth time the Geneva Convention, which regulates in 143 articles how prisoners of war should be treated.

Possessions and property are protected – except for weapons and horses (Article 18), the camp must be dry, clear and warm (Article 25) and there may be no forced labor (Article 49). It’s all written in large letters outside on the prison grounds. “The Russians have also ratified it,” says Yatsenko. But they don’t care. 85 percent of liberated Ukrainian POWs reported torture after their liberation. Yatsenko says he has heard the story about the Chabis over and over again: “They were given a bowl of boiling hot water and a few cabbage leaves in it. They were given one minute to eat. They had to decide: Do I want to burn my neck – or would I rather starve?”

The hands that came to kill now weave wicker chairs

Things are completely different here. Half of the prisoners are overweight after three months. “I would prefer that prisoner exchanges in the future be regulated by weight, and not by the number of people. We have two hungry Ukrainians for one fat Russian,” says Yatsenko.

Gallows humor. He helps the Ukrainian guards cope with the desolation of this place. The work helps the Russian prisoners. Hundreds of prisoners make garden chairs in a stone hall. Pale light falls on the pale faces. The hands that came to kill now weave wicker chairs. Stapling, hammering, drilling. Several Russians use sharp Japanese knives. Only those who survive the two weeks of psychological monitoring after entering the camp undetected are allowed to work with the potential murder instruments here in the wicker chair room.

Everyone else, all dangerous, is in the basement of the neon tubes gluing paper bags together. They receive approximately ten francs per month for this. And also a little distraction from their misery. Vitali (60) needs it urgently. He sits at his table with a glassy look, before him a pile of paper bags, glue and the hopeless situation he has found himself in.

“I volunteered, I am a patriot,” says Vitali, the grandfather from Russia’s far east. From there he traveled across the vast empire to ‘liberate’ Ukraine. His grandfather already fought the Nazis, Vitali says. He also wanted to be a role model for his grandchildren. Instead, he’s not even there for her anymore.

Tolstoy – but no porn magazines

At the very back of the glue cellar, Ablemit (31), tattooed all over, has spent a life in prison – but not in Russia, but in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, which has been occupied since 2014. He rattles off the stock phrases of Russian propaganda, about the oppression in the Donbass, about the Ukrainian Nazis on whom he wanted to take revenge. “I still believe that,” says Ablemit. But revenge must wait. Like any Ukrainian who cooperates with the Russians, he risks fifteen years in prison.

Russian soldiers who voluntarily give up their weapons in battle face the same punishment. Ukraine knows this and that is why it notes that all prisoners of war have been taken against their will. Honestly. But useless. The returnees pose a danger to Putin, Petro Yatsenko explains. They would have seen the real conditions in Ukraine – and they could have cast doubt on the narratives of Russian propaganda. “That’s why he’s sending them right back to the war.”

Anyone who wants to voluntarily return to the warm dormitories (night sleep from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., single beds, Tolstoy books and Bibles, but no porn magazines) of the Ukrainian camp can contact the Kiev Armed Forces directly via the button ‘ I want out’. hotline. Each prisoner receives a card with the number on it upon release. That’s a good offer, says Yatsenko. “Health care in our camp is significantly better than in Russia.” Overall care for prisoners of war costs 250 francs per man per month, about three times as much as the minimum pension in Ukraine.

There’s an X-ray machine in the hospital wing of the secret prison. There is a dental practice and psychological care. A third of the prisoners were wounded or injured upon arrival, the doctor in charge said. Many people over 40 have serious stomach problems. “Of course we help everyone – even though that is sometimes not easy. Especially with the rapists and murderers who go to war to get their sentences reduced and then end up here with us.”

One wrong word – and then the line is cut

One last room, perhaps the darkest in the entire prison: there is a telephone on the table. Each prisoner gets five minutes of talk time per month. Next to it sits a guard who listens carefully to what the men say on the phone. Just one wrong word, one sensitive piece of information, and the line is cut.

Artem (34) does not have any sensitive information, but does have two requests for his wife: “Please send me cigarettes. And please kiss Nikka for me. Then he gets up, goes outside, sits in a side room and talks: about his capture in Donbass, about Nikka, his daughter, whom he misses so much. Artem looks away and tears well up in his blue eyes.

Alan Walker’s song “Faded” plays in the background from the guard’s radio: “Where are you now?” (“Where are you now?”), the woman’s voice sounds. Nikka doesn’t know this, his wife doesn’t know, even Artem himself isn’t sure. All he knows is that he is far away from where he belongs, in a place where he would have lost nothing, and yet he has lost everything.