Jailed Ukrainian mum Natalia Vlasova, 43, suffered horrific torture at the hands of a Russia-backed militant group, who raped her and threatened to kill her young daughter
A Ukrainian mum has told how she was horrifically raped by 15 of Vladimir Putin’s soldiers who then threatened to kill her five-year-old daughter.
Natalia Vlasova, 43, was abused by a gang of Russian militants after she was kidnapped in the Donbas region of Ukraine in 2018. She was then taken to the infamous Izolyatsia secret torture prison, where she was kept before being sentenced to 18 years behind bars on sham terror charges last month.
Despite facing a rigged trial, Natalia bravely told of the torture she was subjected to in court. In addition to the sickening sexual assaults, her torturers also filed down her teeth and electrocuted her until she “screamed loud enough” for everyone to hear.
Natalia described the men who inflicted the suffering on her as “maniacs”, and singled out one leading figure at the torture centre – Vasyl Yevdokimov, also known as “Lenin” – as one of the ringleaders in her abuse. She told the court that he “tried to push a bottle into my vagina”, and added: “I would remind you that this is the person who is your victim”.
According to the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, she also told the court how her Russian torturers “undressed me and bound me with scotch tape, poured water over me and turned on the current”, going on to say: “If I didn’t scream enough, they increased the current and the shocks became even more intense. They needed a reaction. I didn’t understand that straight away, then when I screamed loud enough, I heard their satisfied voices.”
After being tortured, she was bound with her hands above her head in a tiny room and forced to stand in that position all night. On other occasions, she was held captive in a freezing basement compartment where there was only room sit or stand. She was only given a small amount of water to drink throughout her captivity.
In one of the most harrowing parts of her testimony, Natalia also recalled being gang raped by 15 men. One of the militants claimed to know where her five-year-old daughter Yulia went to nursery, and threatened to deliver her a booby-trapped toy packed with explosives.
Two other Ukrainians from the occupied Donbas region – Serhiy Hruzynov and Victor Shydlovsky – were also sentenced alongside her in Russia’s Southern District Military Court under “absurd” terror offences, and told of similar torture at the hands of their Russian captors. The three of them were kidnapped in 2018 – before Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – after Kremlin-backed militias began seizing territories in the nation’s east. Another captured Ukrainian brought before the trial, Andriy Borzunov, died before sentences were passed.
On December 24, judge Oleg Aleksandrovich Cherepov sentenced Serhiy Hruzynov to 20 years and Victor Shydlovsky to 22 years in prison, with both ordered to serve their terms in maximum security or ‘harsh regime’ prison colony. Natalia was sentenced to 18 years in a medium-security prison colony.
