Tortured Ukrainian doctors save victims of Russia’s medical torture in occupied Donbas

Three Ukrainian medics - surgeon Ihor Nazarenko; neuropathologist Yury Shapovalov and dentist and businessman Ihor Kirianeko - were seized and tortured in the Russian proxy ‘Donetsk people’s republic’ [‘DPR’] over seven years ago.  They remain imprisoned to this day, with Russia now also subjecting them, and other Ukrainian hostages, to medical torture through its refusal to provide vital healthcare.  It is almost certainly thanks to medical intervention from Nazarenko and Shapovalov that other Ukrainian victims of torture survived the effects of savage torture in the appalling conditions of the Makiivka prison colony No. 32.

img src="https://khpg.org/files/img/1608822679.jpg" alt="Ihor Kirianenko Earlier photo posted by former Ombddsperson Liudmylo Denisova" />

Ihor Nazarenko is now 53 and has been imprisoned in Russian-occupied Donetsk oblast (‘DPR’) since 3 October 2017.  His sister, Iryna Ivankova, has said that she tried to convince her brother and sister-in-law to leave after the seizure of the city in 2014, but Ihor had refused.  He had never concealed his pro-Ukrainian position and opposition to the so-called ‘DPR’ and refused to remain silent about this. 

His ’arrest’ and those of Shapovalov and Kirianenko were probably part of a wave of seizures that began in the summer of 2017.  These may, it is believed, have been linked with the defection of a former officer of Ukraine’s SBU [Security Service] from Mariupol.  He turned traitor and may have passed on information to the so-called ‘DPR ministry of state security’. 

Nazarenko was seized by armed men in military gear at around 8 a.m. on 3 October 2017.  They were clearly waiting for him as he arrived for work at the Donetsk hospital where he was a surgeon.  His wife received a phone call telling her that he had been detained, and that she should come home.  There six men, some in military gear, carried out a search, removing all electronic devices, memory sticks, etc, telephones, the computer, documents and diaries

The men claimed that Ihor was “involved in terrorist activities for Ukraine’. It is likely that the only true words here were ‘for Ukraine’, with his unconcealed support for his country the reason he was targeted.   He was, in fact, ‘sentenced by the so-called ‘DPR high court’ on 4 November 2019 to 11 years in a harsh-regime (maximum-security) prison colony on ‘spying’ charges under article 321 of the so-called ‘DPR criminal code’, with no mention made of ‘terrorist activities’.

Russia’s abductions of civilians are most often akin to enforced disappearances with it sometimes months or years before the family learns anything.  More often than not any information comes from hostages released in the very few exchanges of prisoners there have been to date.

Here, however, the militants did admit to holding him, first in a temporary holding unit, then in the Donetsk SIZO [remand prison] No 5.  Unlike Kirianenko and Shapovalov, he was not held at the notorious Izolyatsia secret torture prison in Donetsk, however it seems clear from the bruises that his wife saw during a ‘court hearing’ held online that he too was subjected to torture.  Neither this, nor the pressure from the only ‘lawyer’ that the family could find, that he ‘confess’, broke his will. Iryna recalls her brother’s words: “Ukraine is like a mother to me.  How could I betray her?  It would be the same as betraying my own parents.”

Nazarenko was moved to Makiivka maximum security prison colony No. 32 soon after his sentence and has been there ever since, together with Ihor Kirianenko, Yury Shapovalov, Victor Dzytsiuk and other Ukrainians seized and tortured for supporting Ukraine.

Nazarenko and Yury Shapovalov, a neuropathologist, are both reported to have helped other prisoners who, after facing physical torture, were then subjected to medical torture, namely the militants’ refusal of any healthcare, with even medication provided by the men’s families often not passed to them.  Valery Matiushenko, who was finally released in 2024, and who had serious health issues, says he would have been in any greater trouble had it not been for Ihor Nazarenko. 

Freed prisoners have also told Iryna about her brother’s own dangerously poor state of health.  Already prior to his imprisonment, he suffered from a chronic lung illness which has been sharply exacerbated by the appalling conditions in the prison colony.  His wife is only allowed to see him once a year, but can get parcels to him more often

The condition of 63-year-old Ihor Kirianenko is even more serious – see: Seventh year of life-threatening torture in Russian-occupied Donbas for supporting Ukraine

There was concern that the Russians might have illegally moved Yury Shapovalov, who turned 60 last year, to Russia.  He is still at Makiivka, however, with the other men’s families helping to ensure that he too receives parcels, without which it is impossible to survive.  Yury’s elderly mother died in 2023,, and he has no other relatives on occupied territory. 

Yury Shapovalov was very roughly seized on the street in January 2018 and spent many months being tortured at Izolyatsia, with the aim being to force out the supposed ‘confession’ used for Russian propaganda. 

On 16 April 2020, Shapovalov was found guilty of ‘spying’ by a fake ‘court’ of a pseudo ‘republic’ which even Russia had not, at the time, formally recognized.  Typically, this and the 13-year harsh-regime ‘sentence’ were only reported on 15 May 2020.   This horrifically long sentence appears to have been over pro-Ukrainian posts on Twitter [now X] which were claimed to ‘destabilize the situation’ in the Russian proxy unrecognized ‘republic’.  

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