'Monsters': Ukrainian women recount agony in Russian prisons

'These people are monsters,' said Inga Chikinda who lost eight kilos and developed a stutter while imprisoned

Four former prisoners Viktoria Obidina, Tetyana Vasylchenko, Inga Chikinda, Lyudmyla Guseynova (left to right) agreed to speak to journalists

When Ukrainian medic Tetyana Vasylchenko was released from Russian captivity and, on the bus back to freedom, handed a Ukrainian flag, she finally broke down.

"I had never cried, even when I lost comrades," Vasylchenko told journalists. "But when I was given a Ukrainian flag on the bus, I burst out crying." 

Four of the women spoke to journalists in Kyiv on Wednesday to recount what they have lived through: packed prison cells, hunger, physical abuse and humiliation.

Inmates were "packed like sardines" in jail, food was repulsive and they were rarely allowed to go outside for walks, she said.

Her captors told her that her daughter, who left the steel plant with Ukrainian civilians, had been sent to an orphanage.

Women prisoners were subjected to "intense psychological pressure" and constantly humiliated, said Vasylchenko.

The detainees were held "in an information vacuum, they were telling us how everything in our country was going badly."

Guseynova, a volunteer from the eastern Donetsk region, spent three years in captivity. She was detained in 2019 by pro-Russian separatists, accused of making pro-Kyiv statements to orphaned children she was taking care of.

"Too little time has passed since I was liberated, it's difficult," she said.

"I am not ready to speak about physical abuse just yet," Chikinda, who lost eight kilos and started stuttering after being detained, said. 

ant-brw/md/jj

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