Polish man tortured to death in Russia after visiting occupied Ukrainian territory to see whether war was real
It has emerged that a Polish man likely died from torture in the Russian city of Taganrog in 2023 after he travelled to Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine to see for himself whether the war was really happening.
Source: Polish media outlet Gazeta Wyborcza, citing the Russian human rights organisation Memorial and eyewitness testimony
Details: Krzysztof Galos, from Kraków, reportedly crossed the Polish-Ukrainian border in mid-April 2023 and then travelled to occupied territories.
Galos was said to have been sceptical about media reports about the war and decided to verify everything for himself.
Surveillance cameras last recorded his car near the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Galos was subsequently detained at a Russian checkpoint.
Sources told Memorial that Galos was taken to pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in Taganrog, where Ukrainian prisoners of war are also held.
After contact with Galos was lost, his family reported him as missing to the police. For a long time his fate remained unknown.
In January 2025, Memorial, Russia's best-known independent human rights organisation, released a report titled Ukraine: war crimes of Russian aggressors.
Memorial documented systematic torture in the occupied territories and in Russia, particularly targeting foreign nationals. Among the victims was a Polish citizen who had died in Taganrog.
One respondent reported that Galos said he "had gone travelling around Ukraine to see what was going on there, but took a wrong turn and drove up to a checkpoint of Russian soldiers".
Memorial reports that Galos was regularly beaten, especially for not speaking Russian and for Poland's support of Ukraine.
During one inspection, guards beat him so severely that his legs turned blue and began to fail. Krzysztof Galos died in mid-June 2023.
His cellmates were later forced to write statements claiming that detention centre staff "did not use" violence against him and that there had been no conflicts in the cell.
Witnesses said that after this incident, the guards began to beat the prisoners slightly less often, but significantly intensified their so-called "sports" punishments. Captives would be forced to do 200 squats and 100 press-ups, and if the guards considered them poorly executed, the entire cell would be punished with more beatings and additional exercises.
Gazeta Wyborcza says Russia did not inform Poland of the death of its citizen. Galos's son Pawel still does not know the circumstances of his father's death or where his body is.
He has written to the Russian Ministry of Justice and Prosecutor's Office asking for information and has contacted Poland's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Polish president, and the embassies of Ukraine and Russia.
So far the family has only heard back from the Polish Foreign Ministry and Border Guard Service. The ministry said the Polish embassy in Moscow had sent a diplomatic note to Russia's Foreign Ministry after the first reports were published by Gazeta Wyborcza.
Background:
- Pre-trial detention centre No. 2 in Taganrog is considered one of the most brutal places of imprisonment where Russia holds Ukrainian citizens. It was here that journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was abducted while working in occupied territories in August 2023, was held and tortured. Roshchyna's death became known in October 2024.
- It was not until 14 February 2025, during an exchange, that Roshchyna's body, bearing signs of torture and missing some organs, was brought back to Ukraine. The case of the journalist's disappearance has been reclassified as a war crime combined with premeditated murder.
- Ukraine's National Police reported that a notice of suspicion has been served on the former head of the detention centre, who personally ordered Roshchyna's torture. Slidstvo.Info journalists later learned that Viktoriia Roshchyna died on 19 September 2024 in a detention centre in the city of Kizel, Perm Krai, Russia.
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