Witness: The priest was kicked, beaten with a stick, a rifle butt and strangled with a bag for his answers

03.03.2024

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During the war, many Ukrainian journalists devoted themselves to documenting the crimes committed against civilians in our country by the Russian Federation. An example of such activity is journalist Anna Mamonova, who has already collected more than a hundred such testimonies.

The fate of the kidnapped journalist

On the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Hanna talked to the family of reporter Dmytro Khilyuk, who was abducted by the occupation forces on March 4, 2022, in the Kyiv region. I was thrown into a torture chamber with my 74-year-old father, but later my father was released and the boy was taken to Belarus.

The military kept the men in different rooms for a week in some warehouse, lying to each of them. The son was told that his father was released. And to the father that his son was already home. A week later, they were put in
different cars and brought to Dymer. There they met and realized that they were both in captivity. Fortunately, Vasyl was released and walked tens of kilometers to his wife. At that time, the Russians were taking Dmytro to Belarus.

«These are apples, chickens, and the destroyed house of reporter Dmytro Khilyuk. There was also a Red Cross letter from Dmytro. He was sent from a prison in Russia. He did not even say which one. Dmytro’s mother and
father, Halyna and Vasyl, received a letter in September 2022. «My dear mom and dad, I am alive, healthy, and doing well. Dima», – a couple of lines. The first and only news in two years of captivity», – writes Anna
Mamonova.

«There was no news about him for six months. Then this letter. And again there is silence. In May 23, several soldiers who had seen Dima were released. They told us that they were held in a detention center in Novozybkov, Bryansk Oblast, and then transferred to a colony in the village of Pakino, Vladimir Oblast. That`s it. Where is Khilyuk now and how is his health? Why is he in captivity and when will this horror end? But there was no response. Dmytro is one of thousands of Ukrainian civilians who have been taken to Russia. Reporters Without Borders recently announced that they are demanding information about Dmytro from Russia. Where and how? But I know how futile it is», — the correspondent writes.

Torture of a priest

Genichesk, the first month of the occupation. The torture chamber in the basement of school N17. The Russian military are mocking the priest. They ask him why he went to the rallies, where the weapons and Azov are hiding. The priest moans that he knows nothing, he went to the rallies against the occupation to express his opinion:
«I came unarmed. I came out as a free man and expressed my opinion that we do not need help. I speak Russian, we are fine».

For these answers, the priest is kicked, beaten with a stick, a rifle butt, and strangled with a bag. The man is constantly losing consciousness. He passes out, they pour water on him. He comes to his senses and everything goes back to square one. The Russian military are mocking him, using a dialect that sounds like «lnr/Dnr». The beating is led by a man in civilian clothes, an FSB officer with the call sign Bars.

As Anna Mamonova writes, the priest was saved from death in the torture chamber by the fact that the abductions in Genichesk had just begun. The confession machine did not know who to look for and how to find them. They put up surveillance cameras around the city, caught his face at a rally and abducted him one by one.

The priest was released on the condition that he was now a Russian agent. The man stayed at home for a month and fled to the unoccupied territory. Two years after the torture, his hands do not clench into a fist, and he has lower back problems. He shows me his new church and tells me that in the torture chamber he kept asking the military why they were like animals.

«It was only later that I realized that this rage was because they were slaves. They beat me harder when I said I was a free man. The slave is angry not at the master, but at the free man,», — says the holy father.

The murder of a priest

But the 59-year-old rector of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine church in the village of Kalanchak, Skadovsk district, Kherson region, Stepan Podolchak, was not let go alive by the Russian invaders.

According to the Center for Investigative Journalism, on February 13, Russian occupants broke into the home of 59-year-old Podolchak Stepan Yaroslavovych in Kalanchak and took him to an unknown location. On February 15, his wife received a phone call and was «invited» to come identify the body of her husband.

«The Russians tortured him to death. He was the brightest person I have ever met in my life. He is like an angel who came down to earth – faithful to God, pure in heart, honest and just. Stepan Podolchak came to Kalanchak from the Lviv region, and together with the faithful he built a church here for more than 10 years. He was always pro-Ukrainian, held all his services in Ukrainian, prayed for Ukraine, even during the occupation. Perhaps because of this, the Russians took away the most valuable thing a person has – life», – said Svetlana Fomina.

As of February 20, 2024, according to the UN, more than 30,000 Ukrainian civilians have become victims of full-scale Russian aggression. According to the international organization, which many experts still consider to be approximate, 10,378 people were killed and 19,632 were injured. This data reflects only the number of civilian casualties verified by the organization.