Electric Shock, Extortion and Slave Labor: How Russia Ran a Detention Camp in Occupied Ukraine
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Sept. 29, 2022, WSJ

VOVCHANSK, Ukraine—The Russian interrogators left behind some tools of their trade at the sprawling machine-parts plant in this recently liberated city a few miles from the Russian border.

In a building that served as a detention camp, there are two rubber truncheons that former inmates say were used to beat them on the back. There is a wooden pole that was used to hit them on the calves. And there is a high-voltage panel, decorated with
the Z and the V markings of the Russian invasion, which delivered electric shocks to detainees. Replicas of Soviet World War II-era posters still hang above it.

“They beat us, they tormented us, they took us to the forest to shoot above our heads. And every day at 11 a.m., they brought me here for my electric sessions,” said Dmytro Zlenko, a 26-year-old former detainee, as he visited the former camp this
week.

“When I was here,” he muttered, “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

The facility in Vovchansk is one of at least 18 such torture chambers that Ukrainian officials say they discovered after ousting Russian forces from the one-third of the Kharkiv region that Moscow occupied for nearly seven months. They were all part of
the repression machine that Russia has created to eradicate dissent in occupied parts of Ukraine, including those it is seeking to annex. Ukrainian police and security officials say the Vovchansk camp was run by Russia’s Federal Security Service. The
service didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russian authorities have denied mistreating detainees and dismissed evidence of mass graves found in Bucha, Izyum and other liberated cities as fabrication.

In a sign of the commingling of violence and corruption in Russia’s state security system, the camp in Vovchansk also served as a moneymaking enterprise, used to extort cash for its keepers, former inmates and Ukrainian investigators say.

The camp housed no more than 50 inmates at one time, with a total of as many as 300 prisoners estimated to have been held here during the six months the facility operated, Ukrainian investigators say. Detainees brought here were often able to pay their
way out, at the rate of $20,000 per person, if they could gather the cash after all their valuables had already been taken, according to former detainees and an investigator with the Security Service of Ukraine.

Mr. Zlenko, who left the Ukrainian military last year and was detained after the head of a local veterans’ union shared the organization’s membership lists with the Russians, didn’t have such luck. “All I own is two dogs,” Mr. Zlenko said. “
How could I pay them?”

Throughout his 17-day detention, he said, the Russian investigators tried to force him to admit that he was still on active-duty military service, something that he continued to deny despite the beatings and the electric shock. Mr. Zlenko shared a cell
just across the room from the interrogation chamber with 33 other men—six of them Sri Lankan students and workers who say they were used by the Russians as slave labor to maintain the facility. The walls are still scrawled with an improvised calendar
counting the days of detention and some prayers.

The six Sri Lankan men and one Sri Lankan woman, who was imprisoned in a separate cell, were living in the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk when the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Four of them arrived in December to study at the local medical college
and the three others were doing odd jobs. Russian troops entered the city in the first days of the war. The Sri Lankans say they tried to escape toward Kharkiv city, the regional capital that has remained under Ukrainian control.

[photo] Robert Clive Dilukshan, Jokenthiran Thines and Ganeswaran Sarujan were detained for six months at the Vovchansk camp by Russian forces.

At the very first Russian checkpoint outside Kupyansk, they were detained, blindfolded, and sent to Vovchansk, said one of the detainees, Robert Clive Dilukshan, 25. The Sri Lankans spoke no Russian or Ukrainian, and only a few of them speak limited
English. The one word they understood from their Russian captors, Mr. Dilukshan said, was the word “money.” When they said they didn’t have any, they were tortured, he said.

Unable to buy their freedom, the Sri Lankans were kept in Vovchansk to clean toilets and interrogation rooms, and to tidy up after the Russian officers’ frequent drinking sessions, Mr. Dilukshan said.

Often, they were beaten, their heads slammed between the door and the door frame. At a press conference organized by the Ukrainian police, one former detainee, Jokenthiran Thines, 34, took off his socks to show missing toenails that he said had been
pulled by the Russians. The only woman in the group, who spent the past six months separated from the other Sri Lankans, Uthaykamar Mary Edid Prema, 50, sat looking down, rocking silently. After the trauma, she is frequently fainting, said Mr. Dilukshan.

“Every day, we were mentally tortured,” he said. “Every day we were crying.”

Another former detainee, Ganeswaran Sarujan, 25, explained his predicament in the group’s native Tamil language.

“The Russians did not give us proper food. They only let us wash once every five days,” he said. “They gave us only one or two minutes to use the toilets, and even that was only once a day.”

[photo] Detainees scribbled on the wall of their cell at the detention camp in Vovchansk.

[photo] The interrogations room and the high-voltage panel that prisoners say was used to torture them.

The Russians abandoned the camp, setting the Sri Lankans and some other prisoners free while taking others across the border to Russia, as Ukrainian forces closed in on Vovchansk earlier this month. Before their departure, the Russians doused the floors
with kerosene to eliminate any traces of blood and other evidence, Ukrainian investigators say.

No graves have been found on the compound. Ukrainian investigators say they are still probing whether a furnace in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border has been used to burn the corpses of some inmates.

In Vovchansk, where the machine-parts plant abuts the leafy central square and the former Russian military encampment, still surrounded by barbed wire, the detention facility was known throughout the occupation as a place to avoid at all costs.

“Everyone who they thought was against Russia was taken there, for a week, for two, for a month,” said Vitaliy Pylypets, a retired policeman who remained in Vovchansk. A friend of his, a prosperous beekeeper, had to hide for several months after
Russian officials looted his house and started to look for him, seeking ransom. “When the Russians were here, everyone hid their cars, because if they saw a car, they would take it,” he said. His Renault remained concealed through the months of
Russian rule.

In addition to stealing cars, the Russians took seeds and equipment from farmers, and even stripped the flooring from the tourist resort just outside Vovchansk, said Tetyana Konovalova, a local retiree. “You should have seen what happened when they
were finally fleeing,” she added. “They were even carting away sofas with them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-shock-extortion-and-slave-labor-how-russia-ran-a-detention-camp-in-occupied-ukraine-11664444466

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 2:39:19 PM UTC+8, David P. wrote:

Electric Shock, Extortion and Slave Labor: How Russia Ran a Detention Camp in Occupied Ukraine
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Sept. 29, 2022, WSJ

VOVCHANSK, Ukraine—The Russian interrogators left behind some tools of their trade at the sprawling machine-parts plant in this recently liberated city a few miles from the Russian border.

In a building that served as a detention camp, there are two rubber truncheons that former inmates say were used to beat them on the back. There is a wooden pole that was used to hit them on the calves. And there is a high-voltage panel, decorated with

the Z and the V markings of the Russian invasion, which delivered electric shocks to detainees. Replicas of Soviet World War II-era posters still hang above it.

“They beat us, they tormented us, they took us to the forest to shoot above our heads. And every day at 11 a.m., they brought me here for my electric sessions,” said Dmytro Zlenko, a 26-year-old former detainee, as he visited the former camp this

week.

“When I was here,” he muttered, “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

The facility in Vovchansk is one of at least 18 such torture chambers that Ukrainian officials say they discovered after ousting Russian forces from the one-third of the Kharkiv region that Moscow occupied for nearly seven months. They were all part of

the repression machine that Russia has created to eradicate dissent in occupied parts of Ukraine, including those it is seeking to annex. Ukrainian police and security officials say the Vovchansk camp was run by Russia’s Federal Security Service. The
service didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russian authorities have denied mistreating detainees and dismissed evidence of mass graves found in Bucha, Izyum and other liberated cities as fabrication.

In a sign of the commingling of violence and corruption in Russia’s state security system, the camp in Vovchansk also served as a moneymaking enterprise, used to extort cash for its keepers, former inmates and Ukrainian investigators say.

The camp housed no more than 50 inmates at one time, with a total of as many as 300 prisoners estimated to have been held here during the six months the facility operated, Ukrainian investigators say. Detainees brought here were often able to pay their

way out, at the rate of $20,000 per person, if they could gather the cash after all their valuables had already been taken, according to former detainees and an investigator with the Security Service of Ukraine.

Mr. Zlenko, who left the Ukrainian military last year and was detained after the head of a local veterans’ union shared the organization’s membership lists with the Russians, didn’t have such luck. “All I own is two dogs,” Mr. Zlenko said. “

How could I pay them?”

Throughout his 17-day detention, he said, the Russian investigators tried to force him to admit that he was still on active-duty military service, something that he continued to deny despite the beatings and the electric shock. Mr. Zlenko shared a cell

just across the room from the interrogation chamber with 33 other men—six of them Sri Lankan students and workers who say they were used by the Russians as slave labor to maintain the facility. The walls are still scrawled with an improvised calendar
counting the days of detention and some prayers.

The six Sri Lankan men and one Sri Lankan woman, who was imprisoned in a separate cell, were living in the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk when the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Four of them arrived in December to study at the local medical

college and the three others were doing odd jobs. Russian troops entered the city in the first days of the war. The Sri Lankans say they tried to escape toward Kharkiv city, the regional capital that has remained under Ukrainian control.

[photo] Robert Clive Dilukshan, Jokenthiran Thines and Ganeswaran Sarujan were detained for six months at the Vovchansk camp by Russian forces.

At the very first Russian checkpoint outside Kupyansk, they were detained, blindfolded, and sent to Vovchansk, said one of the detainees, Robert Clive Dilukshan, 25. The Sri Lankans spoke no Russian or Ukrainian, and only a few of them speak limited

English. The one word they understood from their Russian captors, Mr. Dilukshan said, was the word “money.” When they said they didn’t have any, they were tortured, he said.

Unable to buy their freedom, the Sri Lankans were kept in Vovchansk to clean toilets and interrogation rooms, and to tidy up after the Russian officers’ frequent drinking sessions, Mr. Dilukshan said.

Often, they were beaten, their heads slammed between the door and the door frame. At a press conference organized by the Ukrainian police, one former detainee, Jokenthiran Thines, 34, took off his socks to show missing toenails that he said had been

pulled by the Russians. The only woman in the group, who spent the past six months separated from the other Sri Lankans, Uthaykamar Mary Edid Prema, 50, sat looking down, rocking silently. After the trauma, she is frequently fainting, said Mr. Dilukshan.

“Every day, we were mentally tortured,” he said. “Every day we were crying.”

Another former detainee, Ganeswaran Sarujan, 25, explained his predicament in the group’s native Tamil language.

“The Russians did not give us proper food. They only let us wash once every five days,” he said. “They gave us only one or two minutes to use the toilets, and even that was only once a day.”

[photo] Detainees scribbled on the wall of their cell at the detention camp in Vovchansk.

[photo] The interrogations room and the high-voltage panel that prisoners say was used to torture them.

The Russians abandoned the camp, setting the Sri Lankans and some other prisoners free while taking others across the border to Russia, as Ukrainian forces closed in on Vovchansk earlier this month. Before their departure, the Russians doused the

floors with kerosene to eliminate any traces of blood and other evidence, Ukrainian investigators say.

No graves have been found on the compound. Ukrainian investigators say they are still probing whether a furnace in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border has been used to burn the corpses of some inmates.

In Vovchansk, where the machine-parts plant abuts the leafy central square and the former Russian military encampment, still surrounded by barbed wire, the detention facility was known throughout the occupation as a place to avoid at all costs.

“Everyone who they thought was against Russia was taken there, for a week, for two, for a month,” said Vitaliy Pylypets, a retired policeman who remained in Vovchansk. A friend of his, a prosperous beekeeper, had to hide for several months after

Russian officials looted his house and started to look for him, seeking ransom. “When the Russians were here, everyone hid their cars, because if they saw a car, they would take it,” he said. His Renault remained concealed through the months of
Russian rule.

In addition to stealing cars, the Russians took seeds and equipment from farmers, and even stripped the flooring from the tourist resort just outside Vovchansk, said Tetyana Konovalova, a local retiree. “You should have seen what happened when they

were finally fleeing,” she added. “They were even carting away sofas with them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-shock-extortion-and-slave-labor-how-russia-ran-a-detention-camp-in-occupied-ukraine-11664444466

This is bad but not seen as bad as there is freedom to roam and hide than what regimented confinement used by US torture camp in Guantanamo Bay told to world.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 2:11:13 AM UTC-7, stoney wrote:

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 2:39:19 PM UTC+8, David P. wrote:

Electric Shock, Extortion and Slave Labor: How Russia Ran a Detention Camp in Occupied Ukraine
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Sept. 29, 2022, WSJ

VOVCHANSK, Ukraine—The Russian interrogators left behind some tools of their trade at the sprawling machine-parts plant in this recently liberated city a few miles from the Russian border.

In a building that served as a detention camp, there are two rubber truncheons that former inmates say were used to beat them on the back. There is a wooden pole that was used to hit them on the calves. And there is a high-voltage panel, decorated

with the Z and the V markings of the Russian invasion, which delivered electric shocks to detainees. Replicas of Soviet World War II-era posters still hang above it.

“They beat us, they tormented us, they took us to the forest to shoot above our heads. And every day at 11 a.m., they brought me here for my electric sessions,” said Dmytro Zlenko, a 26-year-old former detainee, as he visited the former camp this

week.

“When I was here,” he muttered, “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

The facility in Vovchansk is one of at least 18 such torture chambers that Ukrainian officials say they discovered after ousting Russian forces from the one-third of the Kharkiv region that Moscow occupied for nearly seven months. They were all part

of the repression machine that Russia has created to eradicate dissent in occupied parts of Ukraine, including those it is seeking to annex. Ukrainian police and security officials say the Vovchansk camp was run by Russia’s Federal Security Service.
The service didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russian authorities have denied mistreating detainees and dismissed evidence of mass graves found in Bucha, Izyum and other liberated cities as fabrication.

In a sign of the commingling of violence and corruption in Russia’s state security system, the camp in Vovchansk also served as a moneymaking enterprise, used to extort cash for its keepers, former inmates and Ukrainian investigators say.

The camp housed no more than 50 inmates at one time, with a total of as many as 300 prisoners estimated to have been held here during the six months the facility operated, Ukrainian investigators say. Detainees brought here were often able to pay

their way out, at the rate of $20,000 per person, if they could gather the cash after all their valuables had already been taken, according to former detainees and an investigator with the Security Service of Ukraine.

Mr. Zlenko, who left the Ukrainian military last year and was detained after the head of a local veterans’ union shared the organization’s membership lists with the Russians, didn’t have such luck. “All I own is two dogs,” Mr. Zlenko said. �

��How could I pay them?”

Throughout his 17-day detention, he said, the Russian investigators tried to force him to admit that he was still on active-duty military service, something that he continued to deny despite the beatings and the electric shock. Mr. Zlenko shared a

cell just across the room from the interrogation chamber with 33 other men—six of them Sri Lankan students and workers who say they were used by the Russians as slave labor to maintain the facility. The walls are still scrawled with an improvised
calendar counting the days of detention and some prayers.

The six Sri Lankan men and one Sri Lankan woman, who was imprisoned in a separate cell, were living in the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk when the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Four of them arrived in December to study at the local medical

college and the three others were doing odd jobs. Russian troops entered the city in the first days of the war. The Sri Lankans say they tried to escape toward Kharkiv city, the regional capital that has remained under Ukrainian control.

[photo] Robert Clive Dilukshan, Jokenthiran Thines and Ganeswaran Sarujan were detained for six months at the Vovchansk camp by Russian forces.

At the very first Russian checkpoint outside Kupyansk, they were detained, blindfolded, and sent to Vovchansk, said one of the detainees, Robert Clive Dilukshan, 25. The Sri Lankans spoke no Russian or Ukrainian, and only a few of them speak limited

English. The one word they understood from their Russian captors, Mr. Dilukshan said, was the word “money.” When they said they didn’t have any, they were tortured, he said.

Unable to buy their freedom, the Sri Lankans were kept in Vovchansk to clean toilets and interrogation rooms, and to tidy up after the Russian officers’ frequent drinking sessions, Mr. Dilukshan said.

Often, they were beaten, their heads slammed between the door and the door frame. At a press conference organized by the Ukrainian police, one former detainee, Jokenthiran Thines, 34, took off his socks to show missing toenails that he said had been

pulled by the Russians. The only woman in the group, who spent the past six months separated from the other Sri Lankans, Uthaykamar Mary Edid Prema, 50, sat looking down, rocking silently. After the trauma, she is frequently fainting, said Mr. Dilukshan.

“Every day, we were mentally tortured,” he said. “Every day we were crying.”

Another former detainee, Ganeswaran Sarujan, 25, explained his predicament in the group’s native Tamil language.

“The Russians did not give us proper food. They only let us wash once every five days,” he said. “They gave us only one or two minutes to use the toilets, and even that was only once a day.”

[photo] Detainees scribbled on the wall of their cell at the detention camp in Vovchansk.

[photo] The interrogations room and the high-voltage panel that prisoners say was used to torture them.

The Russians abandoned the camp, setting the Sri Lankans and some other prisoners free while taking others across the border to Russia, as Ukrainian forces closed in on Vovchansk earlier this month. Before their departure, the Russians doused the

floors with kerosene to eliminate any traces of blood and other evidence, Ukrainian investigators say.

No graves have been found on the compound. Ukrainian investigators say they are still probing whether a furnace in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border has been used to burn the corpses of some inmates.

In Vovchansk, where the machine-parts plant abuts the leafy central square and the former Russian military encampment, still surrounded by barbed wire, the detention facility was known throughout the occupation as a place to avoid at all costs.

“Everyone who they thought was against Russia was taken there, for a week, for two, for a month,” said Vitaliy Pylypets, a retired policeman who remained in Vovchansk. A friend of his, a prosperous beekeeper, had to hide for several months after

Russian officials looted his house and started to look for him, seeking ransom. “When the Russians were here, everyone hid their cars, because if they saw a car, they would take it,” he said. His Renault remained concealed through the months of
Russian rule.

In addition to stealing cars, the Russians took seeds and equipment from farmers, and even stripped the flooring from the tourist resort just outside Vovchansk, said Tetyana Konovalova, a local retiree. “You should have seen what happened when they

were finally fleeing,” she added. “They were even carting away sofas with them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-shock-extortion-and-slave-labor-how-russia-ran-a-detention-camp-in-occupied-ukraine-11664444466

This is bad but not seen as bad as there is freedom to roam and hide than what regimented confinement used by US torture camp in Guantanamo Bay told to world.

Many people choose to blame others rather than looking inward. Buddha would not approve.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Monday, October 10, 2022 at 4:25:41 AM UTC+8, bmoore wrote:

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 2:11:13 AM UTC-7, stoney wrote:

On Sunday, October 9, 2022 at 2:39:19 PM UTC+8, David P. wrote:

Electric Shock, Extortion and Slave Labor: How Russia Ran a Detention Camp in Occupied Ukraine
By Yaroslav Trofimov, Sept. 29, 2022, WSJ

VOVCHANSK, Ukraine—The Russian interrogators left behind some tools of their trade at the sprawling machine-parts plant in this recently liberated city a few miles from the Russian border.

In a building that served as a detention camp, there are two rubber truncheons that former inmates say were used to beat them on the back. There is a wooden pole that was used to hit them on the calves. And there is a high-voltage panel, decorated

with the Z and the V markings of the Russian invasion, which delivered electric shocks to detainees. Replicas of Soviet World War II-era posters still hang above it.

“They beat us, they tormented us, they took us to the forest to shoot above our heads. And every day at 11 a.m., they brought me here for my electric sessions,” said Dmytro Zlenko, a 26-year-old former detainee, as he visited the former camp

this week.

“When I was here,” he muttered, “I didn’t want to live anymore.”

The facility in Vovchansk is one of at least 18 such torture chambers that Ukrainian officials say they discovered after ousting Russian forces from the one-third of the Kharkiv region that Moscow occupied for nearly seven months. They were all

part of the repression machine that Russia has created to eradicate dissent in occupied parts of Ukraine, including those it is seeking to annex. Ukrainian police and security officials say the Vovchansk camp was run by Russia’s Federal Security
Service. The service didn’t respond to a request for comment. Russian authorities have denied mistreating detainees and dismissed evidence of mass graves found in Bucha, Izyum and other liberated cities as fabrication.

In a sign of the commingling of violence and corruption in Russia’s state security system, the camp in Vovchansk also served as a moneymaking enterprise, used to extort cash for its keepers, former inmates and Ukrainian investigators say.

The camp housed no more than 50 inmates at one time, with a total of as many as 300 prisoners estimated to have been held here during the six months the facility operated, Ukrainian investigators say. Detainees brought here were often able to pay

their way out, at the rate of $20,000 per person, if they could gather the cash after all their valuables had already been taken, according to former detainees and an investigator with the Security Service of Ukraine.

Mr. Zlenko, who left the Ukrainian military last year and was detained after the head of a local veterans’ union shared the organization’s membership lists with the Russians, didn’t have such luck. “All I own is two dogs,” Mr. Zlenko said.

“How could I pay them?”

Throughout his 17-day detention, he said, the Russian investigators tried to force him to admit that he was still on active-duty military service, something that he continued to deny despite the beatings and the electric shock. Mr. Zlenko shared a

cell just across the room from the interrogation chamber with 33 other men—six of them Sri Lankan students and workers who say they were used by the Russians as slave labor to maintain the facility. The walls are still scrawled with an improvised
calendar counting the days of detention and some prayers.

The six Sri Lankan men and one Sri Lankan woman, who was imprisoned in a separate cell, were living in the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk when the Russian invasion began on Feb. 24. Four of them arrived in December to study at the local medical

college and the three others were doing odd jobs. Russian troops entered the city in the first days of the war. The Sri Lankans say they tried to escape toward Kharkiv city, the regional capital that has remained under Ukrainian control.

[photo] Robert Clive Dilukshan, Jokenthiran Thines and Ganeswaran Sarujan were detained for six months at the Vovchansk camp by Russian forces.

At the very first Russian checkpoint outside Kupyansk, they were detained, blindfolded, and sent to Vovchansk, said one of the detainees, Robert Clive Dilukshan, 25. The Sri Lankans spoke no Russian or Ukrainian, and only a few of them speak

limited English. The one word they understood from their Russian captors, Mr. Dilukshan said, was the word “money.” When they said they didn’t have any, they were tortured, he said.

Unable to buy their freedom, the Sri Lankans were kept in Vovchansk to clean toilets and interrogation rooms, and to tidy up after the Russian officers’ frequent drinking sessions, Mr. Dilukshan said.

Often, they were beaten, their heads slammed between the door and the door frame. At a press conference organized by the Ukrainian police, one former detainee, Jokenthiran Thines, 34, took off his socks to show missing toenails that he said had

been pulled by the Russians. The only woman in the group, who spent the past six months separated from the other Sri Lankans, Uthaykamar Mary Edid Prema, 50, sat looking down, rocking silently. After the trauma, she is frequently fainting, said Mr.
Dilukshan.

“Every day, we were mentally tortured,” he said. “Every day we were crying.”

Another former detainee, Ganeswaran Sarujan, 25, explained his predicament in the group’s native Tamil language.

“The Russians did not give us proper food. They only let us wash once every five days,” he said. “They gave us only one or two minutes to use the toilets, and even that was only once a day.”

[photo] Detainees scribbled on the wall of their cell at the detention camp in Vovchansk.

[photo] The interrogations room and the high-voltage panel that prisoners say was used to torture them.

The Russians abandoned the camp, setting the Sri Lankans and some other prisoners free while taking others across the border to Russia, as Ukrainian forces closed in on Vovchansk earlier this month. Before their departure, the Russians doused the

floors with kerosene to eliminate any traces of blood and other evidence, Ukrainian investigators say.

No graves have been found on the compound. Ukrainian investigators say they are still probing whether a furnace in the immediate vicinity of the Russian border has been used to burn the corpses of some inmates.

In Vovchansk, where the machine-parts plant abuts the leafy central square and the former Russian military encampment, still surrounded by barbed wire, the detention facility was known throughout the occupation as a place to avoid at all costs.

“Everyone who they thought was against Russia was taken there, for a week, for two, for a month,” said Vitaliy Pylypets, a retired policeman who remained in Vovchansk. A friend of his, a prosperous beekeeper, had to hide for several months

after Russian officials looted his house and started to look for him, seeking ransom. “When the Russians were here, everyone hid their cars, because if they saw a car, they would take it,” he said. His Renault remained concealed through the months of
Russian rule.

In addition to stealing cars, the Russians took seeds and equipment from farmers, and even stripped the flooring from the tourist resort just outside Vovchansk, said Tetyana Konovalova, a local retiree. “You should have seen what happened when

they were finally fleeing,” she added. “They were even carting away sofas with them.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/electric-shock-extortion-and-slave-labor-how-russia-ran-a-detention-camp-in-occupied-ukraine-11664444466

This is bad but not seen as bad as there is freedom to roam and hide than what regimented confinement used by US torture camp in Guantanamo Bay told to world.

Many people choose to blame others rather than looking inward. Buddha would not approve.

Look at this regimented confinements, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/09/legacy-dark-side.The horribleness of US torture camp was never been voted by UN Assembly or UN Human Rights showed how US and its running dogs had done for themselves for the world
how white power they are to control the world. Even Buddha cannot accept it. Not even Jesus will accept it.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)