"The most terrible prison in Russia." Former Ukrainian prisoners of war talk about the Mordovian VK-10

During all 991 days of captivity, he not only tried not to lose heart, but also joked with his cellmates. He did this even when they barely entered, and sometimes he would just crawl into his cell after the guards mocked him.

The guy spent almost 11 months in colony number 10 in the Republic of Mordovia: from February to December 2024. There he was one of the youngest prisoners of war. Before that, he was in Olenivka and Stary Oskol.

The guy volunteered to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine in November 2021. Before military service, he studied architecture. However, over time, he realized that construction and design did not interest him. But in the army he received a call sign that reminded him of his profession.

“I went to serve, because it was actually my childhood dream. In addition, at that moment, before the full-scale Russian invasion, I realized - thanks to the army, our country still exists,” says “Architect”.

His unit was one of those that defended Mariupol from the first days of the Russian invasion and was taken prisoner from the Azovstal plant. For security reasons, we are preserving the anonymity of this soldier.

“Architect” is one of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who returned home thanks to the prisoner exchanges of 2024-2025. They all talk about systematic beatings, torture and other inhumane treatment in Russian captivity. Thanks to these testimonies, much more information has emerged about the reality of captivity and, in particular, about the most terrible Russian prisons for Ukrainians.

It is worth noting that in September 2025, the Russian State Duma condemned the 1987 European Convention for the Prevention of Torture. It accused the Council of Europe of allegedly failing to respond to Ukraine's violation of the convention.

Among the prisons where Ukrainian prisoners are regularly tortured, one can mention colony number 10 in the village of Udarny, Zubovo-Polyansky district, in the Republic of Mordovia.

"It was difficult everywhere, but it was the most difficult in Mordovia," this is how "Architect" speaks of this prison.

Those who have been through various places of detention, including the Mordovian colony, speak in the same way. This prison is located 500 kilometers from Moscow and 1,600 kilometers from Ukraine.

 

The BBC decided to find out what is known about this prison and those responsible for torturing prisoners of war in it.  

According to the Media Initiative for Human Rights (MIHR), as of June 2023, Ukrainian prisoners in the Russian Federation were housed in more than 40 prisons and detention centers and were regularly transferred from one prison to another. Some places of detention were close to the Ukrainian-Russian border, some - far in the interior of Russia. The Mordovia prison is among the latter.

The prisoners themselves suggest that they were constantly moved from one prison to another so that people would not get used to a particular prison and later be unable to identify the guards. The longer a person stays in one place, the more he can remember and learn.

In addition, the change of prison erases the traces of prisoners, and relatives cannot follow them. But to do so, Russia must constantly expand the locations and list of such places of detention.

The BBC spoke with a total of six soldiers who were captured in Mordovia, as well as with the sister of a marine who died there. Their statements indicate not only the sadistic tendencies of individual guards and medics, but also the systematic and consistent incapacitation of Ukrainian military and civilian hostages. Their statements are consistent and confirm each other.

They claim that their every action - from looking out the window to fetching water - required a permit. Even the smallest offense was cruelly punished. Their stories prove that torture has become part of the system in this prison, and humiliation and fear are the norm.

We also analyzed the complaints of former criminals, inmates of this prison, who filed lawsuits in Russian courts regarding the violation of their rights within the prison walls. These cases reveal new details about the order that reigns in prison number 10 in the Republic of Mordovia.

However, there is a significant difference between the Russian and Ukrainian prisoners in this prison. All interviewed Ukrainian soldiers told the BBC that they hear hate speech and insults against Ukrainians and Ukraine as a country every day. And physical and psychological abuse against them was daily and systematic, while those convicted of criminal offenses complained about individual episodes and waves of abuse.

 

 

VK-10 in the village of Udarny in the Republic of Mordovia is a special regime prison. This is how institutions with the strictest conditions are called in Russia. Men sentenced to life imprisonment or for "especially dangerous recidivism" are sent there. There are three types of conditions in special regime prisons: light, ordinary and strict.

The latter are intended for two categories of prisoners: either those who have already maliciously violated the order within the special regime prison, or convicts who, while behind bars, committed new crimes.

Former prisoner of the colony Vladimir Kachayev told the Russian "Mediazon" in 2015 that the only room where violators of the rules of the law are isolated is "Little Guantanamo". According to him, it is a real hotbed of tuberculosis.

"Pills are given only by prescription. And it is impossible to force doctors to examine you. And it is still the same there. Nothing has changed there, it has even gotten worse. Concrete cells and dampness." Tuberculosis sufferers are in this prison 24 hours a day together with healthy people.

According to BBC sources, Ukrainian prisoners of war and Ukrainian civilians detained by the Russian authorities were brought to this prison en masse in January-February 2023. Just in the winter of 2023, the number of Ukrainian soldiers in Russian captivity increased, and some prisons

in the occupied territories were either closed or overcrowded. It is clear from the decisions of the Russian courts that until 2023, only Russian citizens convicted of criminal offenses served their sentences in prison.

When the placement of prisoners of war in this prison began in January 2023, the number of ordinary prisoners there decreased sharply. Russian prisoners convicted of criminal offenses began to be transferred to other prisons, which they even complained about. Others were recruited to the front.

Yevgeny Prigozhin's recruiters visited Russian prisoners several times. During the second visit, in November 2022, according to human rights activists, about 60 people were registered in Wagner's private military detachment. This is quite a lot, which, in their opinion, can be explained by the very difficult conditions in the prison, where torture and slave labor were practiced.

One of the former Ukrainian prisoners of war told the BBC that in January 2025, he overheard a conversation between guards about the number of prisoners in all four barracks of the prison - 610 people. The total capacity of the prison is about 1,500 prisoners. So the Russian criminals can still be there. Ukrainian prisoners do not meet them.

 

 

The "Architect" recalls how the representative of the Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova came to his cell in Mordovia. The "Architect" stood up in front of him with a large bruise under his eye. This was the mark of a guard's kick, who had just stepped on the prisoner's head, hitting him in the kidneys. And on his legs, the skin was cut from blows with a plastic water pipe.

"The special forces, the guards said: 'We don't need you healthy, we just need you alive.' For them, the beatings and all this torture with the help of electric shockers, these plastic pipes and batons are just entertainment. They fight and laugh, they have fun," the soldier says.

The inspector did not ask anything about the visible consequences of these daily beatings - bruises and cuts on his legs.

"Architect" recalls that before the inspector arrived, the toilet in their cell was separated by a curtain, and clean bedding was shared.

On the bedding in this cell, the "inspector" could see old blood stains. There was fungus on the walls. Skinny, starving Ukrainian prisoners looked at the feet of the representative of the Russian inspection. There were wounds on their feet. They all had scabies.

"He came up to us, looked at us, said: "Are you okay? - Yes. - They're not beating you? - They're not beating us. - Are there any complaints? - None. - Well, everything is fine. Good luck, see you later." The next day, they beat us just because we had a few extra socks in the cell," recalls the former prisoner.

"To beat" means to beat someone on the legs so that they crawl into the cell," explains "Architect".

He also witnessed how one prisoner of war had his legs broken - he could no longer walk. This happened after the "reception", as the registration of new arrivals to the prison is called, when they are stripped naked and driven past a column of workers with dogs who beat and shout at them. "Reception" is one of the cruelest practices in Russian high-security prisons, but so

“They shouted at us: ‘Why do you have monuments to Bandera? Why do you glorify him? But you are fascists, but you are Nazis! But why are you getting closer to Europe? But why do you need Maidan? And why do you need Donbass, which has been bombed for eight years?’ For them, we are simply different. They don't like that we are moving away from the news, that we are going to Europe, that we want to live in a civilized world".  

Just to raise his head and look at the sky, he needed a permit, recalls military driver-sanitation officer Oleksandr Teteryatnikov. He spent almost a year in Mordovia prison. He spent a total of 21 months in captivity. Before his imprisonment in Mordovia, Oleksandr was housed in SIZO-2 in the city of Ryazhsk, Ryazan Region.

When the official inspection came to his Mordovian cell, he saw only the legs of the "inspector". They were forbidden to look up. Ukrainian prisoners never saw the face of the inspector, nor the faces of the guards and criminals who helped them.

Not a single demonstration inspection stopped the abuse of prisoners or improved the conditions of their detention.

"They are led by television propaganda. They were slaves all their lives. They listened to their television, and then they came to the prison for a shift and made fun of us. They reminded us of Mazepa, who betrayed Peter I, during the Battle of Poltava. They reminded us of Bandera, who allegedly worked for Hitler. They don’t know their history,” says Oleksandr about what the special forces of the Federal Penitentiary Service told Ukrainian prisoners.

During his 632 days of captivity, Oleksandr, like other prisoners of war we spoke with, also never saw representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Judging by the testimonies of the deportees, the ICRC does not always gain access to places where Ukrainians are held in Russia, let alone prisons in the occupied territories. This international organization refrains from public comment on this issue.

All this provokes criticism of Ukraine. Unlike the Russian Federation, it gives the ICRC access to Russian prisoners of war on its territory.

 

 

The guards forced "Architect" and other soldiers in neighboring cells to stand on their feet for 16 hours a day. This went on for many months. At the same time, they had to sing the Russian anthem 10 times a day.

The guy had to stand in one place all day. If he leaned over and the guards saw it on the video camera, they would take him out into the hallway. Together with the "guilty" they could break out the entire cell.

"Immediately in the hallway they conducted interrogations with beatings - and who leaned over, who talked, and who moved? You have to stand completely still," says "Architect".

If they gave the command "sit down", he would sit on the edge of the bed and straighten up as much as he could. He remembered that he was not allowed to close his eyes or talk, because then everyone would get up. And they stood for hours again.

 

His young body coped with this burden.

But many of them had swollen legs and abscesses. As a result, Oleksandr Teteryatnikov had a huge wound on his leg. After his capture, he had several operations on it.

"I still can't feel my leg. They beat me everywhere, but there they beat me the longest and most brutally. At the same time, they make you shout: "Thank you, citizen chief!"," says Oleksandr Savov, a marine who was released from captivity in March 2025. He arrived there after leaving Azovstal in May 2022.

He finds it noticeably difficult to walk. In captivity, the marine went through two different prisons and two detention centers, but he had the worst time in Mordovia.

As a result of standing for a long time, trophic ulcers can appear, terrible wounds that may not heal for a very long time.

 

“In this position, venous blood flow deteriorates, tissue nutrition is disrupted, especially in conditions of protein and vitamin deficiency, with constant cold or dampness. The legs are the area farthest from the heart, and without muscle work, the blood stagnates,” explains Nazar Shebela, an orthopedic surgeon at the Superhumans War Trauma Center.

“This is a cruel torture that was used in Japan, Nazi Germany, and the Gulag. It harms both the physical and mental health of a person,” emphasizes Stanislav Lobach, an orthopedic traumatologist at the Dobrobut clinic and a volunteer in the Yangoli outpatient service of the 3rd Assault Brigade.

In some cases, this ends with leg amputations. When a person cannot drink enough water and does not receive enough microelements, it becomes even more difficult for him.

Chronic malnutrition is another test for Ukrainian prisoners. Six months after his capture, “Architect” still cannot gain weight.

On average, Ukrainian prisoners of war lose 25 to 30 kilograms. Some lose much more.

“They threw the second course into the first. And then the salad on top. It was in one portion. And we usually got one ladle. When they gave it separately, we got two ladles,” says Ukrainian soldier Anton about the food in the Mordovian prison. He spent two years there.

“For breakfast, I somehow got 150 grams of water, only eight macaroni and one and a half pieces of bread. If you compare Ryazhsk and Mordovia, the food in Mordovia is much worse than in Ryazhsk,” says Oleksandr Teteryatnikov.

Those who were released from captivity noticed that all the guards in Mordovia wore balaclavas and gloves. They never called each other by their names. Such anonymity and secrecy, according to the observations of the prisoners, could not be found in other, even the most difficult places of detention in the territory of the Russian Federation. There, the guards could give their names and did not always hide their faces.

"During a walk, if they would allow you to stand up, when you walk next to him, God forbid, you would even look at him or look sideways. They were very scared," recalls the "Architect".

All prisoners of war interviewed by the BBC confirmed the regular use of stun guns in the Mordovian prison. Two of the six ex-prisoners said they were applied to their genitals. All of them also confirmed that a shepherd dog was released on the prisoners in this prison.

One of the soldiers saw that the dog was even taken to the shower and kept there while the prisoners washed. There, in the shower, they could also use stun guns.

Denis Cheremisov, a marine from the Kirovohrad region, had scars on his body from the bite of a German shepherd. Of the three years of imprisonment, the guy spent most of his time in the Mordovian prison.

"During the morning inspection, you had to spread your legs as wide as possible. They made everyone do the twine. If your legs were close together, they would kick you so that they spread them wide. They called it the 'swallow position'. And they would simply let the dog off the leash at us at that moment," says Denis.

Prisoners of war were taken out for a walk once or twice a week for three to four minutes. But they could also perform them once a month.

Prisoners interviewed told the BBC that medical care in the prison, if it existed at all, was minimal and only in the most severe cases. For example, scabies, which everyone had, was not treated at all.

 

 

But perhaps the biggest shock for all our interlocutors was that one of the prison doctors, when they asked him for help, would torture them with a taser.

All the soldiers interviewed by the BBC remembered him as "Doctor Evil", as they called him to each other. Instead of medicine, they would receive a blow to the arm or back from him.

"Doctor Evil" refused medical help to those who needed it. You had to make an appointment with him in the evening so that he could give you some medicine in the morning. If a person felt unwell at night, he would torture them with a taser in the morning.

"If, for example, I am not registered, and I have something in pain at night, like a tooth, and I contact him in the morning during a round, he will say: "What's wrong with your tooth?" "Come here." He takes a taser and shocks the tooth. If something hurts at night, he hits it there," recalls the "Architect".

"Doctor Evil" could simply join in torturing the prisoners. So once the "Architect" together with other soldiers in the cell had to learn more than 50 rules of behavior in the cell. One of them got confused. "Doctor Evil" approached him and hit him with a stun gun. After that, he gave them until lunch to learn all the points of the rules.

The same man often appeared in group photos of the doctors of the medical unit that served the prison. We showed the former prisoners a photo of this medic - and some of them recognized him as "Doctor Evil".

Some prisoners never saw his face. "Doctor Evil", like the rest of the staff, wore a phantom, which, however, he sometimes took off. And some former prisoners of war could see him better. Three interviewees confirmed that it was him in the photo.  

This coincides with the testimony of other soldiers interviewed by investigative journalists of the "Scheme" program. They also used a video in which a man's voice is heard for identification.

His name is Ilya Sorokin, he is 35 years old. During the full-scale Russian invasion, Sorokin continued to serve as a medic in a Mordovian prison. In October 2024, he went to war in Ukraine with the call sign "Doctor".

On social media, he said that he was born in the city of Potmi, entered medical school in 2008, and after his first year went into the army. He then married a classmate and has two children. He

graduated in 2011. In 2018, he announced on his Vkontakte page that he had defended his degree in psychology.

 

In May 2022, he received a certificate confirming that he served in prison as a medic. But already in 2025, his page listed "Russian Armed Forces" as his place of work (a copy was saved by the BBC). After the publication of Schema, Sorokin deleted his VKontakte page.

A BBC interlocutor, who spent six years in a Mordovian prison - until October 2023 - claims that Ilya Sorokin was dismissed from the prison administration in 2023, and that he "went to the SVO", as Russia calls the war against Ukraine. Later, according to him, Sorokin returned to prison as a part-time worker.

"A rare beast, he hates convicts. He didn't beat them. He provided the help he considered necessary, in short - none," this is what the former prisoner says about the doctor.

He himself went to war in Ukraine after his release.

"I will say one thing: if I had met him there in SVO, he would not have returned home," added the BBC interlocutor.

In February 2025, Sorokin was the guest of honor at the patriotic events of his medical unit. The local trade union from Mordovia reported on social media about the meeting with "SVO participant" Sorokin and that "such events contribute to strengthening the morale and patriotism of employees in the penal system."

Publications about this meeting said that Sorokin "previously actively participated in the life of the collective, in amateur artistic activities, was a member of the trade union committee, a member of the republican committee of the trade union", and now serves as a "medical instructor of the company". Former colleagues wrote that they bought him a Bulat V4 drone detection detector, handed over 10 camouflage nets and medicines.

These reports coincide with the testimonies of prisoners: the recently exchanged Denis Cheremisov no longer saw the "Evil Doctor" in prison. But a doctor started working there instead.

"And she's even worse. You could at least joke with "Doctor Evil", beg for some pill. And we called this woman "Mother of Doctor Evil". She was always rude to us, never treated us and laughed at our illnesses," said Denis.

 

 

As of May 2025, at least 206 Ukrainian soldiers had died in Russian captivity during the Great War. This information was reported by the Associated Press news agency, citing the Prosecutor General's Office, human rights activists and testimonies of exiles. Among them were soldiers who died in a Mordovian colony.

39-year-old marine Nikolai Andreyuk is one of them. According to his sister Nina, he died in Mordovia in November 2023.

In his youth, Nikolai dreamed of serving in the police, but was not accepted there due to health problems. After that, he worked for some time in a mining quarry.

But, as Nina says, he did not give up his dream. Even before the Russian invasion, he went to serve in the Marine Brigade.

"He really liked this service. He wanted to be a defender and he became one," recalls his sister.

The Russians captured him together with his battalion in Mariupol, probably in April 2022. Since then, contact with him has been lost.

In May of that year, Nina saw her brother in a video of captured marines in Mariupol. In May 2023, another soldier wrote to her that Nikolay had been transferred to a detention center in Taganrog. Nina did not receive any letters from her brother. She also had no official confirmation of his POW status from the Russian Ministry of Defense.

In February 2024, Nina Andrejuk received a call from Ukrainian military officer Serhii. He said that he personally took her brother to the infirmary of correctional prison number 10 in the village of Udarni, in the Republic of Mordovia. According to him, all this happened in November 2023. And this testimony of a former prisoner of war is currently the only confirmation of Nikolay Andreyuk's imprisonment in a Mordovian prison.

It is precisely on such testimonies of those who have returned from captivity that human rights activists and relatives most often rely. Since the Russian side usually confirms information about captivity and places of detention with great delay or does not provide any official information at all.

What Serhiy told Nina gave her both hope and anxiety. At least she found out where her brother was.

Serghiy told her that he had been seriously ill for three days. Nikolai had a big problem with his leg. It was so swollen that the man could not put on his pants.

"He could not even lie down on the bed, so the guys helped him." On the fourth day, he was still sent to the hospital.

Both Serhiy and Nina believed that Nikolai was alive, despite everything. Before the war, he had been a physically strong, hardy and healthy man.

 

But soon Nina Andreyuk found her brother Nikolai among the unidentified bodies repatriated from Russia. After that, a long bureaucratic procedure began, several DNA tests were taken from the mother and sister, and difficult and inefficient communication with investigators, who could not explain the reasons for the delay.

Initially, her brother was registered as killed on the battlefield. In fact, he spent 19 months in Russian captivity. And, as follows from the testimonies of other prisoners, he passed through prisons in Olenivka, Taganrog and Mordovia.

Ukrainian investigators, examining the body, found two hearts in it: his own and someone else's. There were also traces of beatings on it. He had lost almost half his weight.

“Sergey said that they beat him to confess to killing civilians in Mariupol. He would never tell them that. Because he would never do that in his life. And he was also paid to continue speaking Ukrainian. That's how my younger brother is,” says Nina.

Nina buried her brother, Marine Nikolai Andreyuk, on the Walk of Fame in Krivoy Rog in November 2024.

 

Can anyone complain about what is happening? Ukrainian prisoners of war do not have such a right and opportunity.

According to Russian law, this should be available to criminal prisoners. And such complaints can indeed be found in the decisions of Russian courts, although, as practice shows, these complaints can be dangerous for the authors. Court decisions contain important information about the prison itself and the activities of its administration and guards. For example, Dmitry Pereverzev, who served his sentence there, said that the cell in the penal colony, where he was sent in 2012, was "a difficult and humiliating torment" for him.

"It was damp there, the floorboards were rotten, there was no cold water, and due to unsanitary conditions, mice, rats, cockroaches lived in the cell. In addition, the toilet bowls - toilets in the floor - were abundantly covered with human feces."

A Russian court dismissed the lawsuit 10 years later, in 2022, after the prison administration submitted a certificate stating that conditions there were normal. The first group of Ukrainian prisoners was brought there soon after.

Little has changed at Udarny prison over the decades: in 2024, the Supreme Court of Mordovia dismissed a complaint by prisoner Kirill Banetsky about “inhumane living conditions.” He served his sentence there until 2023, just when they began bringing in Ukrainians.

The Mordovian prison has not undergone any cosmetic repairs since the 1980s.

In 2015, prisoner Alexander Reshetov was convicted of “false slander” about a crime after claiming that guards abused him.

"They took me to a room that wasn't meant for that purpose for a search. It was a junior inspector's room, where they drink tea. They made me strip completely under a video camera. Hit the wall or we'll kill you here." They started hitting me hard. It's very scary. I really feared for my life the whole time I was there. There were even times when they could enter the cell with a knife in hand: "Take off your pants," - Russian "Mediazona" quoted Reshetova.

The court declared his statement about violence a false report. The prison medic stated that he "slammed his shoulder against the wall."

In these complaints, the warden of the Mordovia prison, Aleksandar Gnutov, is particularly often mentioned. He still leads it now, when Ukrainian prisoners and civilians are kept there.

Whatever the realities described by those convicted of crimes in these complaints, the conditions of detention of Ukrainians there are even more difficult, the exchanged prisoners emphasize.

 

 

An independent international commission of inquiry, established by the UN General Assembly, reported on the extremely cruel treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war in this and other prisons in the Russian Federation. The commission reported crimes against humanity against Ukrainian prisoners of war. It also acknowledged that they were tortured, sexually abused and denied medical care.

"The denial of medical care demonstrates the Russian authorities' disregard for the dignity and rights of detainees. Thus, the Russian authorities are violating international humanitarian law regarding the health and integrity of detainees. The identification and prosecution of the perpetrators is essential to ending the culture of impunity," stressed Pablo de Greif, the head of the commission.

In addition to prison number 10 in Mordovia, there are other places of detention in Russia where Ukrainian prisoners have been tortured daily for years. Ukrainians were also forced to stand there around the clock, not even allowed to look at each other, hung, beaten with sticks, "burned" with electric shockers, "put on a tape recorder" (tortured them with electricity from a military field telephone, connecting the wire to sensitive parts of the body: earlobes, teeth, genitals, nipples).

The prisoners spoke about this in the courts in Russia, if they were accused there, or to lawyers, and after the exchange - to Ukrainian human rights activists. The prisoners are usually beaten by people in masks.

At the same time, the situation in the "concentration camps for Ukrainians" periodically changes. In some institutions, mass torture may stop for a while, while in others, on the contrary, beatings and torture begin.

Thus, according to BBC and MIPL sources, in 2022-2023. prisoners were regularly tortured in detention centers in occupied Donetsk and in at least 10 other places in Russia.

Vyazma, Smolensk region, Halich, Kaluga region, Voronezh, Mordovia, Kamyshin, Volgograd region, Ryazhsk, Ryazan region, as well as in VK-1 in Donskoy, Tula region, VK-12 in Kamyansk-Shakhtinsky, Rostov region, in VK-7 in Valuyka, Belgorod region. Torture in SIZO-2 in Taganrog is publicly known, there were testimonies of beatings in SIZO-1 in Kursk region.

According to several BBC interlocutors, the new epicenter of torture of prisoners in 2024-2025. were the prisons of the Perm region.

However, in the Mordovian prison there is another group of prisoners whose rights are violated even more severely than the rights of Ukrainian prisoners of war. These are Ukrainian civilians, often residents of the occupied territories of Ukraine occupied by Russia. Many were held there without trial, investigation, official status or contact with their families.

Legally, these people are hostages of Russia, because international law prohibits the taking of civilians into captivity. But in reality they are outside the legal field and protection of the Geneva Conventions. Russia treats them as combatants and applies the same torture as prisoners of war.

"There was information that Ukrainian civilian prisoners were being held in VK-10. However, it was not possible to reach the people who could probably be there - the staff reported that there were no such prisoners in the facility," a lawyer who helps the families of civilian prisoners told the BBC.

After surviving captivity in Mordovia, the "Architect" returned to military service.

After the war, the guy plans to enter a military academy to become an officer. At the same time, he is trying to regain his natural weight after captivity and improve his health. But he admits that he will never forget what he experienced in captivity.