A mini Guantanamo, torture on arrival and 695 forms of abuse: how Russia turned its prisons into conveyor belts of death
Artem Yevdokymenko, from Kyiv Oblast, knows what it is to live in complete uncertainty. In the past two years he has been forced into it twice – both times because of his brother Oleksandr.
Oleksandr was a kind and hardworking man who made his living in construction. In autumn 2024, he was mobilised and sent to the 48th Separate Assault Battalion. That winter, his family lost contact with him. They went to the local enlistment office and called his unit. They were told he was on a combat mission.
In early January 2025, representatives of the enlistment office came to see the Yevdokymenko family and told them Oleksandr was missing in action.
That was the first stage of the uncertainty.
Artem later found a video online that gave him some idea of what had happened. Russian troops had thrown a grenade into a dugout where Ukrainian soldiers were sheltering. Three of them managed to get out, including Oleksandr. Although wounded by shrapnel, he helped another wounded fellow soldier out with him. That was how they were captured.
"About five or six days later [after the visit from the enlistment office staff – UP], I found a photo of my brother on a Telegram channel," Artem says. "In the photo, his hands were being bandaged after he had been wounded. My brother has no fingers on his left hand, so there was no mistaking him. He hadn't shaved for some time and was very thin, but I still recognised him."
When Artem received his first letter from his brother from the Donetsk pre-trial detention centre, he didn't believe it was real at first. When he wrote back, he asked several questions that only Oleksandr would know the answers to. The letter was genuine.
In a later letter, Oleksandr said he was going to stand trial for being a member of a terrorist organisation, as Russia designates the 48th Separate Assault Battalion and by extension its soldiers. He received a 14-year sentence: one year in prison and 13 years in a high-security penal colony.
That was when Artem entered the second stage of uncertainty. After Oleksandr was sentenced, the only thing Artem knew about his brother was that he had been transferred to a prison in Verkhneuralsk, in Russia's Chelyabinsk Oblast. Then contact was lost again.
"This prison is thought to be one of the most brutal places. A lawyer tried to see my brother, but she wasn't allowed in. They just didn't bring him out for the meeting," Artem says.
Usually that means one of two things: either the prisoner was not told a lawyer had come to see him, or he was forced to sign a document stating that he refused to meet the lawyer.
A few days before this article was published, Artem learned the most important thing: his brother was alive. A cassation appeal hearing had been held, and Oleksandr had attended by video link. There was an image but no sound, supposedly because of problems with the audio. The hearing was postponed.