Ukrainian Teen Released From Captivity Claims Witnessing Fellow Prisoners' Torture

A Ukrainian teenager who was released from Russian captivity after spending around 90 days in prison has claimed he witnessed fellow prisoners getting brutally tortured and electrocuted for hours.

The 16-year-old boy, identified as Vlad Buryak, from Melitopol in central Ukraine, was kidnapped by Russian soldiers while trying to flee his hometown in early April. He was reportedly sent to solitary confinement in Vasylivka, a city in the Russian-occupied part of Zaporizhzhia province in southeast Ukraine.

"I was extremely scared. I was shocked. Like everything inside me was burned down," Vlad said in an interview with The Washington Post, where he recalled his experiences.

A week after Vlad arrived in the prison, he got a cellmate who was in his 20s and had a wife and a child. The young man was regularly beaten by the Russian guards and electrocuted for up to three hours. Unable to withstand the brutal torture, the man slit himself using the lid of a tin can and slowly drifted away holding his hand, Vlad said.

The prison guards then took the man out of Vlad's cell and moved him to an unknown location. Vlad said he does not know if the man survived the ordeal.

Vlad said that during his captivity, he was made to clean the rooms where other prisoners were tortured and he would often find medical supplies soaked in blood.

In one instance, Vlad reportedly saw a man hanging from the ceiling with his hands tied down with cables inside a torture room. However, Vlad tried not to get involved and showed no emotions despite the horrifying sights.

"I had no emotions. I have bottled them all up. I was acting like nothing had happened. I showed no aggression, so they won't do the same thing with me," he said.

Vlad eventually got transferred to a better facility, where he could bathe regularly and talk to his father, Oleg Buryak, who was the head of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration.

Oleg constantly tried to set up a prisoner swap to bring back his son, and finally, on July 4, he received a call from a Russian negotiator informing him that Vlad will be released.

"When Vlad was kidnapped, it felt like a piece of my heart was torn away from me. And when I hugged him, I felt like that piece came back," Oleg recalled, as per The Washington Post. However, the father did not disclose information about the prisoner swap.

International Business Times could not independently verify Vlad's claims.

Reports about Russian forces abducting and torturing Ukrainians have not been uncommon since the conflict began in February. BBC News, for instance, noted in a March report that civilians were being kidnapped and tortured as Russians tried to assert control. One of the kidnapping cases mentioned in the report was that of a 75-year-old man who was allegedly held hostage as a punishment because his daughter, journalist Svetlana Zalizetskaya, refused to work with the new administration.

A report claiming Russian soldiers were asking Ukrainian hostages to pay $1,700 each for their release also made rounds last month.