The body of Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Hrytsiuk, who was 180 cm tall and weighed 110 kg before being taken prisoner by the Russian army, was returned in January 2024, having weakened to 50 kg.

   The body of Ukrainian soldier Oleksandr Hrytsiuk, who was 180 cm tall and weighed 110 kg before becoming a prisoner of the Russian army, was returned in January 2024, having lost 60 kg in weight. Oleksandr Hrytsiuk, who was from the Volyn region in western Ukraine, worked as a construction worker and in 2022 volunteered to join the Ukrainian army to fight against the full-scale Russian invasion. In April 2022, he was captured near Novobakhmutivka in the Donetsk region near Novobakhmutivka, he was captured and taken to the Vyazma internment camp. He died as a prisoner of the Russian army in November 2023, and his emaciated body was returned in January 2024.

   The Russian army systematically tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war to death through starvation, beatings, and nail pulling. The death certificates returned to the families of the Ukrainian prisoners of war who died in Russian captivity usually listed the cause of death as tuberculosis or heart attack. The bodies of Ukrainians who had been taken prisoner by the Russians showed clear signs of torture and starvation, and the eyewitness accounts of Ukrainians who had survived captivity by the Russians proved the inhumane treatment and humiliation they had suffered. Oleksandr, who was tall and from western Ukraine, refused to speak Russian and was subjected to the worst forms of torture. Ukrainian prisoners were forced to listen to the Russian national anthem many times a day, forced to do hard physical labor, given inadequate food and regularly beaten, and many of them lost consciousness.

   The problems within the Ukrainian bureaucracy were also highlighted, with Ukrainian officials often accepting the Russian military's fabricated medical diagnoses of Ukrainian prisoners of war, such as tuberculosis and heart attacks, while acknowledging the Russian military's role in the deaths from torture. Looking at Oleksandr, it is clear that he was tortured. His wife disagreed with the Ukrainian authorities, who stated that the cause of death was natural, and appealed against the death certificate. The Russian military documents stated that Oleksandr died of tuberculosis, and a Ukrainian forensic examination also concluded that tuberculosis was the cause of death.The abuse and mistreatment of Ukrainian prisoners was not limited to the Vyazma 2 Detention Center, but spread to 42 detention centers throughout Russia.

Warning: Comparison of Oleksandr Hrytsiuk before capture (left) and his deceased body after Russian captivity (right). Photo: Twitter/Special Kherson Cat