Konstantin Yefremov, a former lieutenant in the Russian army, admitted in an interview with the BBC that his country’s army has used violent techniques to interrogate Ukrainian prisoners, even threatening them with rape and even shooting some of them.
This ex-soldier is in a secret location in southern Ukraine, where he took refuge after defecting, and is now considered a traitor by the Kremlin. He reveals that he tried several times to resign from the military, but was eventually discharged and later managed to flee Russia.
“The interrogations and torture lasted for a week. It was night every day, sometimes twice a day”he explained, while also proving that he had been in the Zaporizhia region, including the city of Melitopol, by handing over military documents and photographs to the BBC.
Yefremov reveals that he arrived in the Crimean peninsula on February 10, 2022, exactly 14 days before the start of the invasion of Ukraine. The goal was for him to lead his men from the 42nd Motor Rifle Division in Chechnya. “At the time, no one believed there was going to be war, not even the most senior officers. Everyone thought it was just exercises,” he assured.
Realizing that what the Kremlin called a special military operation was underway, Konstantin Yefremov decided to resign because he did not want to get involved in a war. “I explained my position to my commander, who took me to a superior officer, who called me a traitor and a coward,” he revealed, adding that he then took a firm stand: “I dropped my gun, took a taxi and left. I wanted to go back to my base in Chechnya and officially hand in my resignation, but my companions called me to warn me that a colonel had threatened me with a 10-year prison sentence … arrested for desertion. And that he even alerted the police.”
Faced with this scenario, Yefremov contacted a military lawyer, who advised him to return to the army. “I now realize I should have ignored that advice and moved on, but I was afraid of being arrested,” he explained.
This former soldier was then temporarily given command of a platoon of marines and three days after the invasion was ordered to go to the city of Melitopol, where he spent ten days on an airfield captured by Russian troops. There, he says, he saw the first atrocities.
“Soldiers and officers would steal anything they could. I remember a soldier picking up a lawnmower and proudly saying, ‘I’m going to take this to mow the grass at our barracks.’ buckets, axes, bicycles…”account.
He then commanded eight soldiers for a month to protect a Russian artillery unit in Melitopol. “We slept outside. We were so hungry that we went hunting rabbits and pheasants. Once we approached a country house, but it was occupied by Russian soldiers and one of the soldiers told us: ‘we are from the 100th Brigade and now we live here’.”, says Jefremov.
In April, the group he led was tasked with guarding the “logistics headquarters” in the town of Bilmak, northeast of Melitopol. And it was there that he says he witnessed the torture, and even remembers a day when three Ukrainian prisoners arrived on the scene. “One of them admitted to being a sniper. As soon as he heard that, the Russian colonel went crazy. He beat him, pulled down his pants and asked him if he was married. Bring a broom. We’ll turn you into a girl and send the video to your wife’.”
According to Yefremov, the same colonel asked a prisoner to name all Ukrainian nationalists in his unit. “The Ukrainian did not understand the question and replied that the soldiers were from the naval infantry of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. As a result, some of his teeth were knocked out.”
On another occasion one of the prisoners was blindfolded and “the Colonel put a gun to his forehead and said, ‘I’m going to count to three and then I’m going to shoot’. He said to him, ‘Comrade Colonel, he can’t hear you, he’s gone deaf!’ .”
Yefremov also reveals that the colonel ordered that the Ukrainians not only get water and biscuits.
During another interrogation, Yefremov reveals that the Colonel shot a prisoner in the right arm and leg below the knee, hitting the bone.
To escape the wrath of the colonel who was “mad”, they treated an injured prisoner and took him to the hospital lest he die of blood loss. “We dressed him in a Russian uniform and took him to the hospital. We told him, ‘Don’t say you are a Ukrainian prisoner of war, because the doctors will refuse to treat you, otherwise the wounded Russian soldiers will shoot at you.’ and we won’t be able to stop them.”
Konstantin Yefremov’s testimony is yet another testimony about the mistreatment of prisoners during the war in Ukraine, and the UN Human Rights Department has already heard more than 400 Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war, who can serve as evidence to attribute possible war crimes.
Source: DN
