Russia Builds 'Torture Prison' In Ukraine City Of Kherson, 150 Held Captive: Ukrainian MP

Russian forces have built a “torture prison” in the Ukrainian city of Kherson where more than 100 people are believed to be held captive, a Ukrainian MP has claimed.

Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian lawyer and politician serving as People’s Deputy of Ukraine, on Wednesday said Russian soldiers have imprisoned nearly 150 Ukrainians in a “torture prison” in Kherson — the first and only major city in Ukraine to have fallen — since Russia began its invasion of the country on Feb. 24.

Her tweet comes after a social media user took to Twitter to reveal that vehicles with the letter Z, which is believed to symbolize Russian forces, appear on a Kherson beach daily at 5 a.m. where they dispose of black bags in the water. It is unclear what the bags contain. The social media user also noted that people living near the area do not want to know what the bags hold.

“Kherson. Every day at 5 am on the old beach Lily arrives a car with the letter Z with a trailer and throws into the water some black bags,” the user wrote. “People don't know what kind of bags they are. More precisely, they want not to know.”

Tweets about torture in the city of Kherson come after Tom Mutch, a journalist in Ukraine for New/Lines Magazine, published a report where a 23-year-old resistance organizer detailed the suffering he experienced at the hands of Russian soldiers while he was held in captivity.

“They cut our hands with their bayonets, broke our ribs with their boots and shot next to our heads as we lay face down on a cold floor,” the resistance organizer said. “They said that they had already started digging their victims’ graves. They said they already had dead bodies in it, including civilians. But we were the lucky ones who were let go after hours of torture. I would strongly advise against falling into their hands.”

In early April, Lyudmila Denisova, Ukraine’s human rights ombudswoman, also revealed they received reports of elderly civilians from besieged cities in the country being massively tortured and killed by Russian soldiers amid the war, as translated by Ukinform.net.