The resistance that took on Russian troops

In a small jail in Kherson, Russian soldiers took a man out of his holding cell multiple times a day to torture him. It was summer 2022, and Kherson had been under Russian occupation for months, and the screams of pain from the prisoners could be heard throughout the jail. Some days, the prisoners could be beaten for information on Ukraine’s military activities, or Russian soldiers could torture them with electric wires hooked up to their ears or genitals, a method The Beast has discovered is called “Biden’s Call.” 

Before the war, the holding cells had been made for one or two people who were awaiting trial for various crimes, but under occupation, multiple Ukrainians were forced into the same small space and kept in them for weeks or months. Russian soldiers arrested some Ukrainians without reason, while others, like Andriy Andryushchenko, 29, were held on one of the most severe charges in Russia—terrorism. 

Andryushchenko said he was part of an underground resistance group in Kherson. When he was arrested, Russian soldiers found deleted pictures on his phone showing military positions and a bulletproof vest with explosive devices in his apartment. 

In the small jail, Andryushchenko had been told that he would never be let go and would be sent to Russia, where he could spend 15 years in prison for terrorism. By a stroke of luck, Andryushchenko managed to convince Russian soldiers to set him free, but his case is just one of the believed hundreds of Ukrainians who have been charged with terrorism in the last two years. Many of those trapped in custody have no way to escape, and they are tortured regularly and stripped of their lives as a victim of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war. 

Fighting Back 

In the first days of the invasion, soldiers distributed weapons to civilians throughout Ukraine so that they could defend themselves and hopefully push back Russian advances. In Kherson, the first city to fall, Andryushchenko had once worked as a security guard in local clubs, but as Russia attacked Ukraine from all sides, he became a volunteer in his city. 

Andryushchenko delivered aid to citizens of Kherson, pleaded with people to move into underground shelters during attacks, and tried to stop looting in stores that were forced to close. Andryushchenko said that he was part of a large number of people in Kherson who were responsible for “civilian defense,” where their activities ranged from spray painting “Slava Ukraini,” Glory to Ukraine, on buildings, to attending anti-occupation protests. 

When the occupation of Kherson began, Andryushchenko said that he and other men started a resistance group, where they would take pictures and mark the coordinates of Russian military activity and send them to Ukrainian forces.

In one of two apartments Andryushchenko owned, he had hidden a bulletproof vest, ammunition, and explosives, but he declined to comment on the purpose for the weapons, saying he had security concerns for some of the men in his resistance group who are still in Russian prisons. 

For six months, Andryushchenko’s activities went unnoticed by Russians. On Aug. 4, 2022, he was in the bar that served as a base for the resistance group when 12 Russian soldiers stormed into the building. 

“They came to the bar, put everyone on the floor, and asked who Andryushchenko was. I said ‘me,’ and they took me into a separate room and started beating me, interrogating me for two hours,” he said. 

Russian soldiers managed to hack into Andryushchenko’s phone and find the pictures he had deleted and the coordinates of military positions. During the interrogation, the keys to both of Andryushchenko’s apartments were found, and he was forced to lead Russians to them. 

When soldiers discovered the supplies hidden in the second apartment, Andryushchenko was detained and accused of working with the SBU. He was taken to the small jail, where he remained for 46 days. Andryushchenko claimed he was tortured multiple times every day. 

The Charge

Multiple Ukrainian civilians have been charged with extremism and terrorism for helping their military defend itself from Russia. As of Jan. 24, 2024, over 8,000 Ukrainians are currently in Russian captivity, including more than 1,600 civilians and tens of thousands of people remain missing, according to the Ukrainian government. 

While there has been progress made on military prisoner exchanges, currently, little progress can be made when it comes to civilians. Under international law, there are no specific guidelines for releasing civilians in captivity. The Geneva Convention states that soldiers can be swapped for one another, but civilians cannot be included in that exchange.

“We have no one to exchange [with] our civilians,” said Anastasia Pantielieieva, Head of Documentation at The Media Initiative For Human Rights, a Ukrainian media team documenting the disappearance of Ukrainian prisoners of war. 

“We cannot exchange our civilians with Russian soldiers. [There] would be a danger that Russian soldiers would get more civilians in captivity from the occupied territories” to take advantage of the swap and get back some of their soldiers, Pantielieieva explained. 

One case that has perplexed Pantielieieva and others in Ukraine is that of nine men from Kherson who were all arrested in Aug. 2022 and have been Russian prisoners for over 32 months. The Kremlin claims that these men all knew each other and were part of a resistance group that had stocked up on weapons and ammunition to attack Russian soldiers. Videos circulated throughout Russia of soldiers arresting some of these men and finding weapons on them, but Pantielieieva said she believes that the evidence might have been planted. 

The wife of one of the men told The Beast that she had never seen her husband with any weapons or heard of any underground resistance. She had not had any communication with her husband since before he was arrested and does not know if he is still alive, but she said she, too, believes that her husband was framed for a crime that he did not commit. 

Oleg Akimchenko was a prisoner alongside some of the nine men charged with terrorism, as well as others accused of collaborating with Ukraine’s military. Akimchenko was never charged with a crime but said that he was helping to smuggle people in danger out of Kherson and giving Ukraine’s military information about Russia’s activities. 

While in prison, Akimchenko heard of some men who were allegedly part of an underground physical resistance but did not know exactly what they were doing. One man was found with weapons and explosives in his apartment, according to Akimchenko. 

Another man “Was just local security. They found a part of a machine gun in his place. Not even a solid machine gun, but still they detained him,” said Akimchenko.

“There was another who was asked by others in this [resistance] group to watch a car. He didn’t know what he was watching. It was a car of the Russian Security Service,” who was then arrested, he added.

In Oct. 2022, Akimchenko was released from prison, but other civilians remained in captivity, and he is not sure why he was let go while others were not. Now, the nine men being charged with terrorism have their next hearing next month and are expected to be detained even longer in Russia. 

In Jail

In prison, Andryushchenko said he was treated differently than the other Russian captives. He was the only one being accused of extremism, and Russian soldiers told him that he would spend the next 15 years in prison for his crimes. Andryushchenko and the other prisoners were tortured multiple times a day for the duration of their capture. Their day would start with a bowl of pasta and one cup of water, the only meal they would receive that day. The deprivation of food, Andryushchenko noted, was the simplest form of torture Russians could do. 

Then came the interrogations, which began at 9 am. “Every morning you wake up. Not because you realize what time it is, but because the interrogation would begin. It goes on around the clock,” said Andryushchenko. 

Often, Russian soldiers would try to force the prisoners to give information on other collaborators in Kherson, screaming at them as they beat them with the ends of their guns, threw water on them, or attached electric wires from a field phone to their ears or genitals and sent currents zapping through their bodies. Andryushchenko could hear the screams of Ukrainians who begged for the torture to stop. There was also a chair with legs fastened to the ground, and Andryushchenko would be tied to the chair with duct tape and punched repeatedly in the face. 

“They were no longer trying to get information out of me. I was just being tortured every day to re-educate me, to punish me for what I did,” he said. 

New prisoners to Andryushchenko’s cell were typically not beaten in the first few days after their arrest.

But during that time, Russian soldiers forbade any of them to sleep, and Andryushchenko said, “If someone sits down or closes their eyes, they [Russians] enter the cell and beat [everyone]. It’s a severe torture, just a simple one.”

“The night is the only time when you can get some rest between days, where they will [still] beat you,” he added. 

For 46 days, Andryushchenko lived as a Russian prisoner until Sept. 16, 2022, when he was abruptly released, what he calls “a gift from God.” He managed to outsmart the guards to let him escape by saying that Ukrainian officials had put Andryushchenko up to the job, promising to pay him for his collaborations. 

“There was no work,” Andryushchenko stressed to the guards in the interrogation room he sat in one day. 

“I went to do it because what else could I do? I had nothing else to earn. And imagine, they didn’t even pay me. I’ll never do this again in my life. Let me go,” he pleaded to the guards. 

Much to his surprise, Russian soldiers did release him, and when Andryushchenko breathed in fresh air for the first time in over a month, it was a special moment for him after spending so long packed together with other prisoners and finding it hard to breathe. 

For the next two months, until Kherson was liberated, Andryushchenko continued to collaborate with Ukraine’s military, refusing to let his experience of being tortured daily stop him from his resistance work. Since then, Andryushchenko has joined Kherson’s local government as a member of the city’s military administration. Although his life has been able to return to some sense of norm, where he can meet with friends and is free from the occupational force, some of the men who once worked in Andryushchenko’s resistance are still sitting in Russian jails and being tortured. 

“This is a violation of all possible norms of humanity towards prisoners, illegal detention of civilians, and [a] torture that pleases [Russians,” said Andryushchenko.

“There are all daily horrors in the occupied territories perceived by the aggressor as a standard behavior. The [Russian] army should not allow such attitude towards humanity,” he added