The seizure of the SSU building in Luhansk marked the beginning of the military conflict stage in Luhansk region. On 6 April 2014, following one of ‘anti-Maydan’ protests, about a thousand people with Russian flags went to the SSU and took the building by assault smashing out the doors and windows. Radyanska Street was blocked by barricades made with tires, construction waste, and barbed wire. Pro-Russian protesters got to the armory and got hold of weapons. The headquarters of the ‘Army of the South-East’ was placed in the building.

Later, the seizure of the SSU became a memorable date in the ‘LPR’. Ihor Plotnytsky, the head of the pseudo-republic, described those events in a characteristic manner:

We harnessed the horse slowly but drove fast. All events nearby and inside the SSU building were peaceful, without weapons or violence. Later, it turned out that an organization tasked with ensuring security of all citizens of Ukraine, turned into a spying terrorist center working under American control.

Reuters photo

A former prisoner of the gunmen told the ‘Den’ newspaper about the SSU building structure:

The building is divided into floors and left and right sectors with a staircase in the middle. Each sector accommodated a combat unit with its own commander who was in contact with the headquarters to receive order. The commander and his gunmen live in their sector, but in a separate room. It was only possible to enter another section if you had a permission from that unit’s commander… Clearly, professionals were in charge of organizing defense - every floor was mine-studded. Other militants had no special training, they were people from Luhansk region, Crimea, and other regions.

This place became one of the harshest places of detention in Donbas where people were routinely assaulted, tortured, and held in inhumane conditions. Its prisoners included Ukrainian military and politicians, pro-Ukrainian activists, locals, separatists’ friends and others, including Oleksiy Bida, human rights defender from the Ukrainian Helsinki Union, and Anna Mokrousova, Vostok-SOS activist. In an interview with Hromadske TV after her release, Anna said that the SSU was a place for imprisoning the ‘political’ prisoners and people, in relation to whom they asked for ransom payment. In addition, she said that conditions and torture in the SSU were significantly more cruel than at the Luhansk Regional Administration building, another place where hostages were kept.

One of the prisoners described the grim fame of this place:

… Soon, we were locked and taken away. Judging from the route… I realized they were not taking us to the SSU. I was relieved because there were very bad rumors about the SSU, people were telling horrible things… That they beat people simply for pleasure and mutilate people.

Conditions

During interviews with human rights defenders, former prisoners described conditions of detention at the shooting range located in the basement.

It was a dirty, cold, and damp place. The air was stale due to the lack of ventilation and the smell of containers with feces. They did not take the prisoners outside, so they urinated and defecated into plastic bottles. Since the day the SSU building was seized, nobody took these bottles out, they just piled up in the corner.

A former prisoner said that the militants came to practice at the shooting range and calibrate their rifles. They aimed at the bottles: ‘you should see how these jars and bottles of urine were flying all over the room’. They only thing that saved was that the smell of gunpowder was stronger than the smell of spilled urine.

Prisoners were deprived not only of food, but also water. Some of them were drinking water from radiators. People who were taken to perform forced labour had an opportunity to eat and get some water there.

[They] didn’t feed or let out to use the bathroom; [they] didn’t take us for walks, only for forced work… [During] the wake-up, at any time of the day or night, people with assault rifles would come in and say, ‘Let’s go’.

There was no furniture at the  basement, only concrete floor. When asked to described sleeping arrangements, a witness said, ‘A nice cold floor. I could sleep where I wanted’.

Prisoners were beating right inside that place. According to the prisoners, the floor of the shooting range was covered in blood.

Locals detained for violating curfew or other disciplinary violations were treated less severely. For instance, they were taken out from the cellar for forced work without handcuffs. In addition, one could avoid torture if there were prospects of getting ransom or exchange.

An interviewee talked about someone he knew imprisoned at Luhansk SSU basement. The person was severely beaten, but when OSCE observers came, his clothes were changed, and he was taken to the room to show that conditions of detention were decent.

People were also held in the fridge. Below is how a prisoner described this room:

The regional SSU has several buildings. One of them, a one-storey building with a basement, appeared to have some food-related purpose. There was a fridge where they used to put me, an out-of-order fridge, but it was very cold. The size was about three by four meters, maybe a bit bigger. There were two beds placed on top of books, there were some books… There were doors on these books, the so-called ‘beddies’, with some stuff on top. Since I was wearing a light shirt and pants, and the fridge was very cold, I had to wrap myself up.

Interrogations and torture

Survivors of Luhansk SSU testify about horrifying details of torture they experienced or witnessed. Prisoners were hit by hands and feet, buttstocks, bats, fittings, wires; they were subjected to electrical current, mock executions, shots over their heads and the Russian roulette.

Often, interrogations and beatings had no purpose. For instance, one man was regularly interrogated and asked ‘where his units of the Right Sector were’. Frequently, people who took part in beatings were doing it for fun; some of them came from outside. One of the victims stated that he was beaten by hundreds of people during his stay at the basement.

*** was mutilated, practically turned his groin into a bloody mess. Later, he was dumped somewhere next to a hospital. He was taken to the hospital, and they came there and finished him there.

19-year old Oleksandr Manhush, who was captured in June 2014 for participating in Euromaidan, was tortured for a day. They were preparing him for an execution, but his mother managed to collect 60 thousand dollars for ransom (according to Manhush, it was an excessively large amount, usually, the gunmen asked for 10 thousand).

While I was there, they beat me, used electric current, shoved needles under my fingers, beat me till I was unconscious… Then, they would throw me to the basement and drag back for interrogation when I was more or less conscious again.