Abductions and secret prisons: Stories of Russian captivity survivors

#russia #ukraine #stories
Russian troops occupied the city of Melitopol in the first days of the full-scale invasion and turned it into Europe’s largest prison.
Locals were protesting the occupation and reported intelligence and coordinates of moving Russian troops. The occupation authorities started a real hunt for the reporters, throwing them into secret prisons and extracting confessions by force.
Hundreds of Melitopolians, who were not partisans but did not want to join the Russian side, also went through captivity. What did the abducted go through and how did they manage to survive? What price did their families pay for their release? Most importantly, what is the real “Russian world” that they will never tell you about on TV. Watch the stories of survivors in our new documentary “Mom, I was in Hell.”
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Nothing is known about the fate of Leonid Popov since August 2023. If you have information that can help find Leonid or other Ukrainians abducted by the occupation authorities, email to our journalist Polina Uzhvak at uzhvak@istories.media
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🔵 Time codes
00:00 “My son was kidnapped in Melitopol”
01:42 How the Russian military managed to settle in the city
02:40 Who, how and why abducted Melitopolians in the streets
04:17 “I reported the coordinates of moving Russian troops”
05:41 Interrogations, forced extraction of testimonies, and death threats
07:34 How Russian officers were deceiving the mother of kidnapped Leonid Popov
09:24 In what conditions the prisoners were held and how they were being mentally broken
10:10 “Discharge, another discharge - my whole body was twitching very intensely”
11:03 “They beat me with a stick so badly that I couldn’t use the toilet for 4 days”
12:17 $10,000 demanded for release from Russian captivity
13:20 “I couldn’t believe that I saw the sun and breathed in the air”
14:23 How Leonid Popov was abducted for the third time
15:30 “Me and thousands of other guys and girls went through it”