Torture, beatings, starvation: "Azov" fighter Maksymchuk, sentenced to 20 years in colony, tells about his detention in Taganrog detention centre
Oleksandr Maksymchuk, a Ukrainian prisoner of war from the ‘Azov’ battalion, sentenced to 20 years in a maximum security colony, spoke about the brutal torture he suffered in Detention Centre-2 in Taganrog, Russia. In this way, Russian security forces tried to force him to admit guilt, repent and refuse to have a lawyer.
This is reported by "Mediazona", Censor.NET informs.
In his video testimony, Maksymchuk spoke about the brutal torture he suffered in Taganrog's SIZO-2, where many Ukrainian prisoners are held.
I was subjected to all conceivable and inconceivable methods of pressure. I was tortured twice, beaten, and subjected to moral and psychological pressure with the use of special means, namely stun guns. All this was done to make me recognise the 'Azov' association as a terrorist organisation," he says.
How did he get captured by the Russian Federation?
Oleksandr Maksymchuk took part in the defence of "Azovstal" in Mariupol and was taken prisoner by Russia in May 2022.
He spent the first time in the former Volnovakha colony No. 120 in Olenivka, where a Russian filtration camp was set up. In the autumn of 2022, Maksymchuk was transferred to the Taganrog detention centre, which has been holding captured Ukrainians since the beginning of the full-scale war.
After that, he was transferred several more times to detention centres in Rostov-on-Don and returned to Taganrog.
In July, Maksymchuk's case was brought to the Southern District Military Court. Earlier, at one of the hearings, he had already spoken about the torture, including starvation, to which he was subjected in SIZO-2.
Maksymchuk was twice connected to the hearings via video link: he asked once again to be taken to court, with traces of beatings visible on his face.
The verdict against Maksymchuk and the torture of other prisoners
The Azov man was sentenced on 5 December, after which he managed to talk to journalists.
Maksymchuk repeated the statement about torture that he had made earlier at the hearing - he was beaten with water pipes, hands and fists, hung upside down, tortured with electricity and starved.
Other detainees in the SIZO were also tortured - Maksymchuk told about a Russian citizen who suffered for saying ‘Glory to Ukraine’, as well as his fellow soldier and cellmate Pavlo Semenov, who developed a pneumothorax as a result of being beaten by the security forces (accumulation of air or gases in the pleural cavity - ed.)
In addition, Maksymchuk said that he receives neither letters nor parcels, although other prisoners receive mail.
The "Azov" fighter has a wife and son born in 2019 waiting for him in Ukraine.
