53-year-old Olha Kapralova has told a Russian court exactly how she and her 61-year-old husband Hennadiy Kapralov were abducted from occupied Melitopol in 2023 and has described in detail the torture and threats to her children and grandchildren used to extract a fake ‘confession’. Olha’s testimony before the Southern District Military Court in Rostov on 31 August corresponded closely to the account of torture given earlier by Hennadiy Kapralov except that he was also bound to a chair and forced to endure hearing his wife being tortured.
During questioning, Olha Kapralova (b. 5 January 1973) denied the charges and retracted the ‘testimony’ obtained under duress while she was held incommunicado, without charges having been laid. She explained that from August through November 2023, she had been held prisoner by the FSB without any official registering of arrest or court order remanding her in custody. During this time, she was denied any access to her family or to a lawyer, with measures taken to conceal both the places where she was held and the names of her captors.
“During that first period I was subjected to brutal physical and psychological pressure. I was threatened, including through (threats to) the security of my children and grandchildren. By November 2023, I was in such a state that I was willing to sign everything that they proposed.”
“They used electric currents against me, asphyxiation, injected me with some kind of substance; beat me. I don’t know what with as I had a bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back.”
It has long been clear the FSB standardly abduct Ukrainians and hold them incommunicado, without official status, in order to ‘free their hands’ and enable them to torture with impunity. Olha’s testimony in court essentially confirms this as the physical torture stopped after she was officially detained, although the threats and pressure still continued. She described how one of her torturers, from the ‘temporary holding facility’ had turned up and brought documents for signing. “As we were driving to the investigator, he said: “If you resist, shall we go for more of the same?”
In reporting the hearing, Mediazona says only that after the questioning, “in connection with the considerable discrepancies”, the testimony given to the investigator was read out. This is normally because the prosecutor insists, with it, unfortunately, standard for ‘judges’ from the Southern District Military Court to ignore anything but the earlier ‘’testimony’, and to ask no questions however glaring the differences. ‘Judge’ Maksym Mikhailovich Nikitin has already been involved in one show trial of men abducted from occupied Melitopol, and there are, unfortunately, no grounds for expecting that he will behave differently in this case.
As reported, Hennadiy Kapralov (b. 26 September 1964) has also told the court to beatings; torture and threats against their family. Hennadiy has heart problems which came to the fore when his captors taped him to a chair and set about beating him in the chest. As well as beatings, they also knocked out his front teeth and subjected him to electric current torture (where wires are attached to particularly delicate parts of the body). There was also an occasion where his captors, probably deliberately, made him think he was about to be shot.
They also brought in Olha and beat her, while he was bound to a chair, with this repeated over several days.
There is every reason to assume that the treatment used to extract ‘testimony’ from Diliaver Kurshutov, who is much younger, than the couple, was even more brutal. The Crimean Tatar Resource Centre first reported on 4 March 2024 that Diliaver Kurshutov had been ‘arrested’ and was accused of supposedly planning a ‘terrorist attack’ on Yevhen Balytsky, the Russian-installed ‘head’ of occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast. It was claimed that his so-called ‘handlers’ in Kyiv had offered to pay him two thousand euros for poisoning Russian military and ten thousand euros for a successful attempt on Balytsky’s life. Later reports assert that Hennadiy and Olha were also offered money, with the FSB standardly throwing in mercenary motives in order, presumably, to try to discredit Ukrainians acting out of patriotism and wanting to help defend their country.
Hennadiy and Olha Kapralovy had, purportedly, been seized at the same time, with a search of their home alleged to have found substances which, according to the Russians, could be used to make “chemical weapons of mass destruction”. Ukraine was accused of planning ‘acts of terrorism’ with the use of chemical weapons containing an equivalent to the military ‘Agent BZ’. The claims were grandiose and probably based solely on the videoed ‘confession’ from Kurshutov almost certainly obtained through the same illegal means as the ‘testimony’ extracted from Olha Kapralova and her husband. almost certainly made while held incommunicado and probably without any procedural status or lawyer. It is noteworthy that the ‘guilty’ verdict against Kurshutov on 23 September 2025 and ten-year sentence left out a lot of the claims, making no mention, for example, of a planned attack on Balytsky. (see: Telling omissions in Russia's show trial claiming Ukraine’s use of ‘chemical weapons of mass destruction’)
Like Kurshutov, both Hennadiy and Olha Kapralovy are facing charges under multiple articles of Russia’s criminal code, including ‘a terrorist act’ (Article 205 § 2); ‘involvement in a terrorist organization’ (Article 205.4 § 2); ‘training in terrorist activities (Article 205.3) and explosives charges. These are not trials in any real sense of the word, and convictions are essentially predetermined. It is, unfortunately, possible, if not likely, that Olha and Hennadiy Kapralovy will face even longer sentences than that passed against Diliaver Kurshutov effectively in retaliation for retracting false ‘confessions’ and explaining just how they came to be in Russian captivity and the methods used to force them to ‘admit’ to whatever bizarre claims were made.
