A team of Russian human rights defenders traveled to Ukraine for two weeks in January 2025, interviewing survivors of torture, freed prisoners of war, and witnesses to missile strikes. What they found confirmed a pattern three decades in the making: the same methods Russian forces used to terrorize Chechnya have been transported wholesale to Ukraine.
The Memorial Human Rights Center report documents a sprawling system of kidnappings, secret detention facilities, and extrajudicial killings across occupied Ukrainian territory—crimes the authors describe as part of "a chain of wars, a chain of crimes, a chain of impunity."
Key findings
- 40 interviews conducted across seven Ukrainian oblasts in January 2025
- Three-tier filtration system: checkpoints, collection points, secret detention centers
- Detention facilities hidden in basements, garages, hospitals, schools
- Consistent torture methods: water torture, electric shocks, suffocation, sexualized violence
- Ukrainian POWs denied Geneva Convention status, held without outside contact
- Systematic strikes on civilian infrastructure
How the "filtration" system works
The term "filtration" carries dark historical weight. Soviet authorities used filtration camps after World War II to process over 4.5 million returning prisoners of war and civilians from occupied territories—roughly one in six faced further repression. The same vocabulary and practices resurfaced during the Chechen wars of the 1990s, when an estimated 200,000 people passed through the system. Between 3,000 and 5,000 "disappeared."
In Ukraine, Russian occupiers adapted these methods. The mission documented a structured three-tier filtration process: checkpoints upon leaving occupied towns, collection points where people waited days or weeks for screening, and finally, illegal detention centers where those who failed earlier checks faced brutal interrogation.
"At all stages of the Russian occupation, the filtration system operated. Kidnapping people, placing them in secret prisons, interrogations, torture, extrajudicial executions, and deportation deep into Russia became the norm."
Kherson: a case study in occupation terror
The report focuses extensively on Kherson, which Russian forces occupied from March to November 2022 without significant fighting. Initially, occupiers avoided open force against mass protests. They preferred targeted disappearances.
From the start, Russian security services arrived with prepared lists of targets—compiled from existing intelligence networks and later expanded using local administrative records and information extracted under torture. Veterans of Ukraine's Anti-Terrorist Operation, territorial defense members, local officials, volunteers, and even hunters with legal gun permits found themselves on these lists.
Secret detention facilities appeared across the city: in former Ukrainian detention centers, in basements of government buildings, garages, hospitals, even schools. The FSB coordinated operations while various Russian security agencies—Rosgvardiya, military police, MVD—participated in kidnappings and interrogations.
Those against whom fabricated criminal cases could be built were shipped to Russia or Crimea, where courts handed down massive prison sentences. Some detainees were released after agreeing to secret collaboration with Russian intelligence. Others simply vanished.
The torture toolkit
Across all detention locations, survivors described remarkably consistent methods: water torture, suffocation, electric shocks, beatings, and sexualized violence. These practices appear in testimony from temporary field sites, from established detention centers in Kherson Oblast, and from formal Russian penal facilities thousands of kilometers from Ukraine.
One survivor from the Simferopol SIZO described conditions from March 2022 through February 2023. Another recounted detention in Kherson's makeshift prison in a basement on Pylyp Orlyk Street. The reports share common elements: denial of food, water, sleep, and medical care, combined with complete communication blackouts and restrictions on movement.
Russian authorities refuse to recognize Ukrainians as prisoners of war, denying them Geneva Convention protections. Many are held incommunicado with no contact with the outside world. Others are "legalized" through criminal prosecutions—frequently charged with terrorism for serving in units like Azov, Aidar, or Donbas battalions, which Russian courts have retroactively designated as terrorist organizations.
"Create unbearable conditions—do whatever you want," Russian commanders reportedly instructed special forces personnel rotating through detention facilities.
Strikes on civilians as strategy
The Memorial mission also documented missile and drone strikes across Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Mykolaiv—attacks the authors conclude were either deliberately aimed at civilian targets or inherently indiscriminate.
In Kharkiv's Saltivka district, investigators recorded systematic strikes using cluster munitions, guided aerial bombs, and Kh-22 missiles—all causing mass destruction in residential areas. In Mykolaiv, Iskander missiles, S-300 systems, Kalibr cruise missiles, and Shahed drones struck apartment buildings with no military targets nearby.
"The systematic nature of attacks directed at destroying civilian infrastructure and terrorizing the population indicates the presence of intent, and that these strikes formed part of a military strategy violating international law."
The weapons themselves—including Iskander ballistic missiles, Kh-22 anti-ship missiles repurposed for ground attacks, and S-300 air defense systems used offensively—lose accuracy under combat conditions. When fired into densely populated areas, their use becomes inherently indiscriminate under international humanitarian law.
A history lesson ignored
Memorial's authors draw explicit connections between events in Ukraine and earlier Russian military operations. Officers who served in Afghanistan during the 1980s brought interrogation and detention practices into the post-Soviet Russian military. These methods were refined during the Chechen wars, where filtration camps and "zachistka" operations became standard tools of population control.
Zachistka—literally "cleansing"—involved surrounding a village, detaining all military-age men, and subjecting them to mass interrogation and torture to extract information about insurgents or force collaboration with Russian intelligence.
"For years, Memorial reported on crimes that Russian security forces committed inside the country, warning that sooner or later this lawless violence would spill beyond its borders. Our voice was not heard. Now the terror perpetrated by the Russian state in Ukraine is already addressed to all of Europe."
The facilities selected to hold Ukrainian prisoners—IK-10 in Mordovia (a legacy of the Soviet special camp system), SIZO-2 in Taganrog, SIZO-3 in Kizel—were chosen specifically for their histories of isolation and secrecy, where torture is easier to conceal and outside contact can be strictly controlled.
The mission's significance
This was the first Russian human rights monitoring mission permitted on Ukrainian territory since the 2022 invasion. The team—working with Ukraine's Kharkiv Human Rights Group—conducted 40 interviews across Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Odesa, and Chernihiv oblasts.
The report explicitly calls the documented violations war crimes and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Ukraine ratified the Rome Statute in 2024; Russia is not a member but its citizens remain subject to prosecution for crimes committed on Ukrainian territory.
"It is necessary to break this chain of wars, chain of crimes, chain of impunity."
