‘Worse than hell’: Castrated Ukrainian soldier details months of torture as a prisoner of war
A Ukrainian soldier who was castrated by Russians while they held him prisoner has opened up about the horrifying torture.
A Ukrainian soldier who was castrated with a knife while being held by the Russians as a prisoner of war has described the brutal torture he endured in captivity as “worse than hell”.
The 28-year-old man, who was a prisoner-of-war for three months alongside a 25-year-old Ukrainian, was one of several survivors referred to psychologist Anzhelika Yatsenko after being released in a prisoner swap.
Ms Yatsenko has outlined the torture some of her patients endured at the hands of Russian soldiers in a harrowing new report that details the impacts of sexual violence against men in the Ukraine war.
At first, the soldiers were unable to tell their psychologist, who specialises in troubled young men, what had happened to them while they were captured, she told the Sunday Times.
“I knew from previous cases they had probably been tortured,” Ms Yatsenko said.
“As someone who gets referred the hardest cases, mostly men under 35, it’s very hard to surprise me.”
But when Ms Yatsenko, who works in Poltava, finally learned that the 25 and 28-year old had been castrated with a knife, she said the details were so disturbing that she struggled to act professionally,
The Times reported.
“It was the first time I behaved not like a professional psychologist,” she told the outlet.
“I’d never heard anything so horrible. I told them I needed the bathroom and went and cried and cried. I didn’t want them to see as they might think there’s no hope.”
After savagely beating the two Ukrainian soldiers to within an inch of their life, drunk Russian troops castrated them with a knife.
Ms Yatsenko told
The Times that the pair had become suicidal and the younger one had already tried to take his own life.
“One of them told me, ‘I don’t know how I am still alive, there was so much blood, I thought I’d die of blood poisoning’,” she said.
“And of course it’s not just the physical damage. Imagine, they are young men just starting their sexual life and then in one second it’s all over. They still feel something, all these hormones, but they can’t do anything. They can never be sexually active. For a young man it’s the worst thing to happen.
“Their dignity has been damaged so badly and it’s impossible to forget. The Russians told them, ‘We are doing this so you can’t have kids.’ To me this is genocide.”
According to the psychologist, the oldest of the two soldiers later insisted on returning to the front line “to be away from women”.
