Seventh year of life-threatening torture in Russian-occupied Donbas for supporting Ukraine
The life of 63-year-old Ihor Kirianenko is in danger due to medical conditions either caused or exacerbated by the savage torture he endured during the first years of his captivity in the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’], yet even the medication that his family send often fails to reach him. Russia’s denial of responsibility for the abduction and torture of civilian hostages in ‘DPR’ was always an evident lie. Since 2022, the fiction has become especially pointless since Russia has claimed ‘DPR’ to be ‘Russian territory’ and must, therefore, by its own logic, bear responsibility for the continuing torment of hostages held prisoner for seven or eight years.
Although Kirianenko held a clear pro-Ukrainian position, he had remained in Donetsk after the seizure of power by Russian and Russian-controlled militants in order to care for his paralyzed mother and elder brother, who has cerebral palsy. Kirianenko is a dentist by profession, but prior to the events of 2014 had run his own business linked with electronic medical equipment.
Kirianenko was seized on 30 December 2018 in the centre of Donetsk by armed men who put a bag over his head and took him away. Although his family now know that the men were from the so-called ‘DPR ministry of internal affairs’, such actions were more akin to an abduction than an arrest.
It was ten days after his seizure that Kirianenko’s family learned that he was being held at Izolyatsia. The former cultural centre in Donetsk had been turned into a secret torture prison in June 2014 where both men and women were tortured. Former hostages have provided harrowing accounts of the torture methods, with these applied, they say, both to extract supposed ‘confessions’ and ‘for entertainment.
Kirianenko was already in his fifties and had several chronic conditions, including diabetes, pancreatitis and a pancreatic tumour. None of this stopped the Izolyatsia ‘staff’ from pulling out their entire arsenal of torture methods, including electric currents attached to particularly delicate parts of the body; beatings that fractured his ribs and damaged his kidneys and pulling out his teeth with pliers.
His son, Rostyslav, says that his father’s condition became so critical that the militants tried to move him to a temporary holding unit but that the staff of the latter didn’t want to admit him. They only agreed after the militants forced Kirianenko to sign a document saying that he had no complaints against the Izolyatsia administration and that his injuries had been caused by falling downstairs. Such ‘statements’, or the signatures to them, are typically obtained by threatening the victim with another session of torture. Rostyslav says that his father was moved to the other unit for around two weeks, but did not receive any medical treatment.
The horrific torture has taken a heavy toll, with Kirianenko suffering both a heart attack and a stroke. He was held for over two years in the basement of the SIZO, or remand prison, where they hold people suffering from tuberculosis.
Failure to provide medical care in itself constitutes torture, with Kirianenko still often not receiving even the medication which his family has managed to send for him.
‘Trial’
Ihor Kirianenko was charged with ‘spying for Ukraine’ under Article 321 of the so-called ‘DPR criminal code’. Almost two years after being seized and tortured, he was ‘sentenced’ on 16 December 2020 to 12 years in a maximum-security prison. The family’s efforts to find a lawyer proved useless, with the person temporarily appointed simply putting pressure on Kirianenko to admit to the charges. It has long been a problem in occupied Donbas that independent lawyers are nervous of the consequences if they agree to represent Ukrainians seized on essentially political charges. There is, effectively, no chance that Kirianenko’s right to a fair trial was observed.
Kirianenko is in the Makiivka prison colony No. 32, where most of the ‘DPR’ political prisoners are held. The information about the torture he endured, the lack of medical care and the conditions has come from the hostages who were freed in an exchange of prisoners in December 2019. The information vacuum was always bad and has become much worse since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is known that Kirianenko was badly wounded when the Makiivka prison colony was shelled on 31 August 2022. He received shrapnel wounds to the spine, buttocks and legs. He was taken to the Makiivka Hospital no. 2, where the staff did not even try to remove the shrapnel, but just bandaged the wounds, after which, bleeding, he was taken back to the prison colony. It was only on 6 September 2022 that the shrapnel in his spine was removed (in the prison colony), however that in his thighs remained. He needs a serious operation to remove it, and his family are especially concerned given Kirianenko’s diabetes which means that wounds do not heal and could become gangrenous.
Publicity is vital to ensure that Ihor Kirianenko and other Donbas hostages, including neuropathologist Yury Shapovalov and surgeon Ihor Nazarenko are not forgotten and that pressure is placed on Russia, and on Ukraine’s leaders, to ensure their inclusion on lists of prisoners for exchange. Rostyslav believes that his father is slowly dying in the horrific conditions of a Russian-controlled prison colony. He needs proper medical treatment now.
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