Russian Soldiers Forced Ukrainian Prisoner Vlad Buriak To Clean Torture Cells

Russia has forcibly deported at least 20,000 Ukrainian children since the start of its large-scale invasion, while Kyiv has managed to bring back 2,000 minors.

“- Published A former British soldier sentenced to 15 years in a maximum-security Russian prison colony has told the BBC he feels abandoned by the UK government”

BBC

Vlad Buriak, a former Ukrainian prisoner who was 16 when he tried to flee Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhia region, told Euronews that Russian soldiers forced him out of a car at Vasylivka on April 8, 2022.

BBC

Buriak said one of his tasks was to clean the torture chamber, recalling, "One of my tasks was to clean the torture chamber."

He said he was first taken to a filtration camp, then to a police station prison, and finally to Melitopol, where he was placed in an old hotel converted into a prison.

Euronews also reported that Buriak escaped and returned to Ukraine after 90 days of Russian captivity, largely thanks to the effort of his family, civil society and Ukrainian officials.

Euronews said Ukraine has brought back 2,000 children out of the 20,000 forcibly deported by Russia, calling it an important milestone, while it also cited Yale University’s humanitarian research lab estimating the number of deported Ukrainian children to be closer to 35,000.

Moscow says the number could reach 700,000, and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) stressed that the real number is virtually impossible to verify.

Euronews

ISW’s framing in Euronews was that Russia has stolen tens, even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children with the explicit aim of erasing their Ukrainian identity and making them Russians.

Buriak told Euronews that the Russian soldiers and special forces who tortured people told him that Ukraine no longer existed and that "our president had already escaped."

Euronews also quoted Bring Kids Back UA project lead Maksym Maksymov describing the returns as taking years and saying, "There is no legal mechanism with established rules, nor international oversight."

In occupied Ukraine, a Russian court in the Donetsk region sentenced Oscar Mauricio Blanco Lopez, a 42-year-old Colombian, to 19 years in prison for "mercenarism," after finding he participated "as a mercenary in an armed conflict."

“Back in the homeland, Russian prisoners of war are still alive, but at what price”

l'Opinion

The Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office statement cited by Ouest-France said Blanco Lopez signed a contract with the Ukrainian army in May 2024 and was captured by Russian soldiers in the Donetsk region in December 2024.

The BBC reported that British ex-soldier Hayden Davies, captured after joining the Ukrainian army's foreign legion as a volunteer, was sentenced to 13 years in a Russian prison in December last year by a court in Donetsk, and that a Moscow judge added two more years last week.

Davies told the BBC in letters from inside a detention facility, "I served my country for 12 years in the [British] Army, and now, when I need help and medical treatment, no-one wants to know."

A UK Foreign Office (FCDO) spokesperson told the BBC, "We strongly condemn the sentencing of Mr Davies in a Russian-controlled court on false charges of mercenaryism."