Vyacheslav Perevozkin. Stock photo: SSU
Посилання скопійовано
The Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), together with the National Police and the Office of the Prosecutor General, has collected evidence against Vyacheslav Perevozkin, head of a Russian prison where Ukrainian captives are tortured and killed.
Source: SSU; National Police of Ukraine; Office of the Prosecutor General
Details: Since 22 July 2024, Perevozkin has held the position of head of Federal State Institution Detention Centre No. 3 of the Main Directorate of the Federal Penitentiary Service for Perm Krai of the Russian Federation.
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An investigation has found that in September 2024, the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna and Yevhen Matvieiev, the mayor of the Dniprorudne hromada of the Vasylivka district in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, were killed in this torture facility. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.]
The case materials state that the victims died as a result of cruel treatment, torture and failure to provide necessary medical assistance, directly related to the actions and inaction of the detention centre’s management.
The investigation established that Perevozkin issued criminal orders and knowingly allowed the use of physical and psychological violence against Ukrainians.
Ukrainian law enforcement officers have also documented other instances of torture, beatings, humiliation of human dignity, unlawful “interrogations”, the creation of inhumane detention conditions, as well as the deliberate failure to provide proper medical treatment to unlawfully detained civilians. Such behaviour was systematic, intentional and repressive in nature.Based on SSU materials, Perevozkin has been served, in absentia, with a notice of suspicion under the following articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine:
Part 1 of Article 438 (cruel treatment of the civilian population committed by prior conspiracy by a group of persons)
Part 2 of Article 438 (cruel treatment of the civilian population combined with intentional murder, committed by a group of persons acting in concert).
He faces life imprisonment for these crimes.
Read more: The Viktoriia Project: the story of the captivity and torture endured by journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna and thousands of Ukrainians imprisoned by Russia
Background:
In March 2022, Roshchyna was captured by Russian occupiers and held in Berdiansk for 10 days.
In 2022, Roshchyna wrote a series of reports for Ukrainska Pravda from temporarily occupied territories, including pieces on life in occupied Crimea during the war, on how the pseudo-referendum had been conducted in Russian-occupied Donetsk Oblast and a photo feature from devastated Mariupol.
In order to get to the occupied territories, Roshchyna left Ukraine for Poland on 25 July. She planned to travel through Russia to the occupied east of Ukraine in three days.
Viktoriia Roshchyna disappeared on 3 August 2023 while reporting from Russian-occupied territory.
It was not until May 2024 that Russia admitted to having detained Roshchyna. The Russian Ministry of Defence sent a letter confirming this to her father, Volodymyr Roshchyn.
Russia delayed the repatriation of Roshchyna’s body, which was only returned in February 2025.
The Office of the Prosecutor General reported that Roshchyna’s body showed multiple signs of torture and cruel treatment, including abrasions, haemorrhages, a broken rib and evidence of electric shocks.
The investigative team established that when the body was brought back to Ukraine, it bore signs that an autopsy had been performed in Russia. Journalists have learned that several internal organs were missing, including the brain, the eyeballs, and part of the trachea.
An international forensic pathologist said that this may be evidence that the Russians were attempting to conceal the real cause of death, in particular suffocation. A a funeral was held in Kyiv for Viktoriia this year on Friday 8 August.
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