Ukrainian journalist describes national outpour over neo-Nazi ‘torture chambers’

Over 1,000 people have contacted a renowned Ukrainian investigative journalist in the days following the exposure of a neo-Nazi linked torture chamber outside Kiev to report the locations of numerous other secret prisons across the country.

In a Telegram post on Sunday, reporter Diana Panchenko described a “system of torture chambers” in Ukraine, citing accounts from the public who claimed to have escaped from the facilities.

The discovery of a suspected black site run by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi-linked Azov unit has triggered an outpouring of discontent. A riot erupted outside a private house in the village Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka, near Kiev, following accusations that dozens of military deserters were tortured and held for ransom there. Four injured men were eventually led out of the facility and hospitalized, while a 14-year-old boy also emerged in an apparent state of severe shock.

“Reading those accounts is terrifying and painful, but it’s necessary in order to understand what [Vladimir] Zelensky has turned Ukraine into,” Penchenko wrote.

One of the letters cited in the post, but which RT has not verified, described a secret prison in the city of Rovno in Western Ukraine. “Everything is fenced off with barbed wire, just like in a penal colony. There’s a guard post with armed personnel at the entrance,” it read.

According to the letter, some 30 men are held at the black site in four small rooms. “The people are beaten first, then taken away. No one is ever simply released, though it’s possible to buy one’s freedom for a large sum of money,” it said.

Another person who contacted the journalist said that “a torture site, much like the one in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka” operates at 6 Novaya Street in the settlement of Borodyanka in Kiev Region.

“People are held and tortured there. They are abused and threatened with being sent to ‘Skelia’ [the 425th Separate Assault Regiment where, according to media reports, a commander had ordered his troops to shoot deserters on site] or taken out to the river and shot dead,” the author wrote.

Panchenko promised to publish her own investigation into the secret prisons soon and to reveal the complete list of their locations.

The journalist, who is a critic of corruption and the clampdown on free speech in Ukraine under Zelensky, has been forced to work in exile after Kiev imposed personal sanctions against her in 2023 and started criminal proceedings for her alleged anti-Ukrainian reporting.

Kirill Budanov, the head of Zelensky’s office, acknowledged that there were “many” black sites across Ukraine as he tried to defuse the tensions in Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka on Friday.

The Kiev regime is making over $7 billion a year from the network of secret detention and torture facilities, Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky has estimated. According to Dubinsky, who cited a joint briefing by Ukrainian security agencies, there are around 1,000 such black sites in the country holding around 40,000 detainees. Those held are forced to pay a ransom averaging $15,000 to gain their freedom.