Russian forces are holding hundreds of people in “torture chambers” in occupied Kherson, a Ukrainian official has said. “According to our information, some 600 people are … being held in specially converted basements in the region of Kherson,” the Ukraine presidency’s permanent representative in Crimea, Tamila Tacheva, said.

According to Ukrinform, Ms. Tacheva said that Russian invaders have confined these prisoners within “specially equipped rooms, in torture chambers,” Ukrinform reported. Most of those being held in “inhuman conditions” are “journalists and militants” who organized “pro-Ukrainian gatherings” in Kherson following its occupation by Russian forces in 2014. 

New Russian rocket attacks on ports and granaries in Kherson and Mykolayiv also have been reported in Ukrainian media, though the specific timing of those attacks was not immediately clear. While the claim of Russia torturing captured Ukrainian fighters and journalists is difficult to corroborate, it fits a pattern of allegations concerning rampant Russian human rights abuses since the invasion of Ukraine on February 24. Accounts of Ukrainian journalists who have been violently detained and subject to torture in and around Kherson have periodically appeared in Western media in recent months. 

These incidents are separate from battlefield and crossfire casualties suffered by journalists while they are exercising their profession in Ukraine. They underscore the danger of working in the country, particularly in contested locations east of the capital, Kyiv. Last Friday a driver transporting two Reuters journalists to  Severodonetsk in  eastern Ukraine was killed and the two international news reporters were wounded. According to Reporters Without Borders,  at least eight journalists have been killed while reporting on the war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

In a further sign of the Kremlin’s nefarious tactics in Ukraine, Reuters reported that Russia has transferred more than a thousand Ukrainian troops who had surrendered in Mariupol onto its territory. Citing TASS, the news agency reported that soldiers who surrendered in the city of Mariupol after weeks of fierce resistance were transferred to Russia for investigation. Ukraine is working to bring all the prisoners home, but just how well they are being treated inside Russia right now is anybody’s guess. 

In the meantime, the Guardian reported that pro-Russia officials in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic have opened a trial against two British fighters who were captured alongside Ukrainian soldiers at Mariupol. According to the report, the men face the death penalty for “terrorism” and for fighting as “mercenaries” against the Russians. Video shown on pro-Kremlin social media depicted the two Britons sitting in “a courtroom cage reserved for defendants.”

If the images are confirmed, the newspaper said, it would make the men the first Ukrainian soldiers to be tried by pro-Russian forces in what observers predict is a series of show trials aimed at justifying Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Such pseudo-military tribunals could be meant to mirror the war crimes trials being held in Kyiv for various atrocities allegedly committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine.