"We're tired of beating you Ukes": Azov fighter Yuzhnyi on his two years of torture in Taganrog, prison humour, and his own system of survival

"Glory to Ukraine, guys. If anyone makes it home, tell them what’s happening in Taganrog." – Mykhailo Chaplia was in Pre-Trial Detention Centre No. 2 in Taganrog, Russia, when he came across this message, origin unknown. Now is not the time to reveal exactly where it was encoded.

Mykhailo, a tall and wiry man from Kharkiv with a sharp sense of humour, reminded me of the main character of Ivan Bahrianyi’s The Garden of Gethsemane [a 1950 novel which drew on the author’s own experience of a Soviet labour camp].

Some of the events described in the book are experiences Mykhailo has lived through. The Russians starved him, tortured him with electric shocks, broke his ribs, locked him in a tiny basement, and attempted to extract absurd "confessions" from him.

Mykhailo Chaplia, alias Yuzhnyi, ultra football fan of FC Metalist and Azov officer, devoted nearly ten years of his life to military service.

He started out in tank reconnaissance in March 2015 and became an armoured personnel carrier driver in 2017, and later a staff officer. He defended Mariupol, and in May 2022 he left the Azovstal steelworks for "honourable captivity".

For the first four months, he was held in a prison camp in Russian-occupied Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast. Then, at the end of September 2022, he was transferred to the pre-trial detention centre in Taganrog, about 120 km (74 miles) east of Mariupol, where he spent 24 months.

Taganrog is not just the name of a city – it’s synonymous with the conveyor belt of torture designed by Russia. It’s where the Russians break people, beating confessions to fictitious crimes out of them until they are ready for a show trial.

"Taganrog is the perfect place for Russians because there’s no oversight," Yuzhnyi says, recalling the brutality of the guards and investigators. "Dostoyevsky once used the term ‘administrative ecstasy’ – when people get drunk on power. That’s exactly what it is."

Yuzhnyi talked to Ukrainska Pravda. Zhyttia about his two years of torture in Taganrog, the "Telegin system" that helped him get through, the prisoners’ gallows humour, and the massive surprise he got after his release.

"When you arrive in Taganrog, they pound you like a meat patty"

Taganrog, September 2022.

When new prisoners arrived, guards from every shift would gather alongside Russian special forces for their "reception". Armed with batons, sticks and tasers, they were tasked with beating several hundred prisoners as they ran down a corridor.

"On the very first night, guys’ bodies were being dragged away on bedsheets," Mykhailo recalls.

Yuzhnyi was relatively lucky that time – he "only" ended up with cracked ribs and broken fingers. But many of his comrades suffered much worse – their broken ribs punctured their lungs. Some of the prisoners died of pneumothorax.

"When you arrive in Taganrog, they electrocute you, pound you like a meat patty, and tread on you with their boots. It doesn’t matter whether you scream ‘I’ll sign everything’ or stay silent – they beat you anyway, without asking questions. You have to do 200 to 500 squats. Your muscles are inflamed and you physically can’t do anymore, but you do it anyway.

Then you go out for a ‘walk’ – and before that, they beat you again. You have to walk quickly and in perfect sync. If you don’t, they ‘teach’ you very fast," Mykhailo recalls.

When Yuzhnyi arrived in Taganrog, suddenly the regime at Olenivka looked like a children’s summer camp in comparison. Though brutal, it had at least been predictable. The prisoners there could walk around the territory, talk to each other, and even see the sun. All of those "privileges" vanished at Taganrog.

Prisoners had to walk in an "L-shape" – head down, hands behind their back. Raising their eyes was forbidden, and so was speaking without permission. Even if they were asked a question, they first had to say "Permission to answer, citizen officer."

Every movement – walks, showers, interrogations – was accompanied by beatings, and not just from the guards, but Russian special forces as well.

"Whenever a new unit of special forces arrived, the first thing they’d ask was: ‘Where are the Azov fighters?’ The guards would point us out and say, ‘There they are, look.’ I was an Azov officer from Kharkiv, a staff officer, and a football ultra, so I got the full treatment. A dog would grab you in the corridor, and if you flinched, they’d shock you.

One of the guys was bitten by the dogs until he bled during his ‘reception’ and his uniform was torn to shreds. When he asked for a new uniform, the ‘citizen officer’ sneered: ‘Oh wow, what’s wrong with your arms and legs? Why are you covered in blood?’ The other guards laughed. Then they said, ‘Hey, why’ve you ruined your uniform?’ – and started beating him for that.

When they were ordered to stop beating the prisoners with their fists, they switched to torturing them with electric shocks. I remember one guy near me who couldn’t take it anymore and just screamed, ‘Please, I’m begging you, just punch me and kick me instead.’ That’s what they reduced people to."

"You have no choice but to eat shells, scales and tails": everyday life

A floor consisting of twelve planks, a bench, a table, and a toilet. That was the basement cell where Yuzhnyi spent 17 of his 24 months in Taganrog.

The guards’ latrine was in the corridor opposite the cell. They deliberately left it unflushed. Next to it was a shower, which became yet another site of torture.

The prisoners were taken there once a week under blows from batons and tasers. But if they were "lucky" enough to be summoned for interrogation at that time, they would have to wait another week for their next chance to wash.

The cells always stank of urine and sweat. There was dampness, foul smells and mould everywhere. Yuzhnyi was lucky – amazingly, he never contracted tuberculosis.

"There was no soap, no toilet paper. At first we had one cup for two people – you drank from it and used it to wash," Mykhailo recalls.

The prisoners dreamed about food constantly. Yuzhnyi craved borshch, syrnyky (curd cheese pancakes), fried duck, crucian carp, burgers, apples, oatmeal cookies and kefir.

They had to eat very different "delicacies": sauerkraut with water, semolina porridge with raw herring or, if they were lucky, with cooking fat. Before captivity Mykhailo weighed 105 kg (231 lb; 16 stone 7 lb); when he was released, he was down to 58 kg (128 lb; 9 stone 2 lb).

"They feed you worse than a dog. But you have no choice but to eat shells, scales and tails. You have to eat it all up very fast, wash your dishes, and hand them over to the ‘balandyor’ [an inmate who distributes the meals]," he recalls.

For a while, the prisoners managed to scratch short messages into the bottoms of their bowls. These words gave them more strength than the watery gruel they were fed. But then the prison wardens found out and they began scrubbing the messages away.

"An addict, a professor, and a Territorial Defence fighter": cellmates

The special block cells in the basement held a mishmash of prisoners, both military and civilians. There was Volodymyr Baraniuk, the commander of the 36th Marine Brigade, and the mayor of Kherson, and a Colombian who didn’t understand a word of Russian, and dozens of others who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"For a while, I shared a cell with a drug addict from Luhansk who had hepatitis, a Territorial Defence fighter from Mariupol with lung cancer, and two men from Melitopol – one was a professor, and the other couldn’t tell his right from his left. That’s how absurd it all was," Yuzhnyi says.

The man from occupied Luhansk was well on in years and suffering from hepatitis. He hoped the Russians would believe he was innocent and release him, but their so-called justice knew no mercy.

"The drug addict, Serioha, was thrown into my cell. He’d been accused of being an artillery spotter and brutally tortured. He had two taser burn marks so big that you could fit your little finger inside. His legs were purple and so swollen that an infection had already set in. He’d started wetting himself, but they didn’t give a shit."

Mykhailo looked after his cellmate for about a month. He begged the guards not to take him out into the corridor, carried him on his shoulders, and helped him wash himself. But there was no soap, which made it twice as difficult.

"I’d call the bathhouse attendant ‘citizen officer’ and he’d tell me to f**k off – this happened over and over again, at least ten times. But I was getting beaten constantly anyway, so I just kept asking. Eventually I annoyed him so much that he chucked a bar of soap into my cell – it was tiny and covered in pubic hair, but at least it was something," he says.

Ultimately Yuzhnyi paid for his kindness to his cellmate. He was beaten, and Serioha was moved to another cell.

"We’re tired of beating you Ukes": the guards