Russia has intensified a disinformation campaign alleging that Ukraine operates "secret prisons" where Russian prisoners of war are tortured, Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation (CPD) reported on 12 February.
There is no direct evidence linking the campaign's timing to the 62nd Munich Security Conference, which opened this week. But the coincidence is hard to ignore. Just days earlier, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) warned that Russia would flood the conference with disinformation operations, including rallies on German streets secretly organized by Russian intelligence services. The "secret prisons" narrative fits a broader pattern the CPD has tracked since 2014: fabricated atrocity claims recycled whenever Moscow needs to deflect international scrutiny.
What Russia claimed—and what the evidence shows
In an interview with Kremlin-aligned media, Rodion Miroshnik—a high-ranking collaborationist in the so-called LNR and Russia's ambassador-at-large for "crimes of the Kyiv regime"—claimed Ukraine holds Russian POWs in "basements" and "secret prisons," where they face torture by "electric chairs" and forced staged filming.
The CPD noted that Miroshnik's claims—which also featured in an identical campaign last July—rely solely on testimonies from Russian POWs returned through prisoner exchanges, whose physical condition casts serious doubt on their credibility. "These fabricated claims aim to shift blame for war crimes from the aggressor to the victim and to create an informational smokescreen around new evidence of Russia's own atrocities," the CPD stated.
The EU's anti-disinformation body EUvsDisinfo has repeatedly documented Russia's use of fabricated atrocity narratives to deflect from its own documented war crimes—a tactic the Kremlin deploys systematically ahead of major diplomatic events.
The inversion: Russia accuses Ukraine of what Russia does
The cruelty of the narrative lies in its inversion. While Russia fabricates stories of Ukrainian torture chambers, documented evidence shows that Russia systematically tortures Ukrainian POWs in its own custody.
A December 2025 Meduza investigation detailed systemic abuse, finding "violence for violence's sake" against Ukrainian prisoners. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian prison officials ordered guards to "be cruel" to Ukrainian POWs from the war's first weeks. Ukraine's Prosecutor General has documented over 270 cases of Russian forces executing surrendering Ukrainian soldiers—with only two convictions to date.
Why the pattern persists
Russia's disinformation strategy operates on a simple principle: muddy the moral picture enough that Western audiences begin to see "both sides" where none exist. The latest revival of the "secret prisons" claim comes as the Munich Security Conference is underway—and as HUR has warned of Russian-orchestrated influence operations targeting the event. The Kremlin works multiple channels simultaneously—from street-level provocations to diplomatic-grade propaganda.
The narrative serves Moscow's broader goal of undermining support for Ukraine at a time when European leaders debate continued military and financial assistance. Twelve years of repeating the claim have produced no evidence. The claim's persistence reveals its purpose: not to convince, but to exhaust.
