The story of Serhiy Savchyn, who was held by the occupiers in several Russian colonies. Serhiy Savchyn, a resident of Mykolaiv, was serving his sentence in the local correctional colony No. 90 at the time of the occupation of Kherson. After the invasion of Russian troops, he passed through dozens of places of detention in the occupied territory and in Russia, where he suffered torture, starvation and serious illnesses.
On 25 February 2022, Russian military personnel and collaborators entered the colony. Prisoners were forced to speak only Russian and were beaten for speaking Ukrainian. Later, they were transported to the left bank of the Dnipro River, and during the evacuation from Kherson in the autumn of 2022, they were taken to the Goloprystan district. There, in a colony for tuberculosis patients, more than 550 people were held in a facility designed for 150.
Then they were transported to the Simferopol and Krasnodar pre-trial detention centres, and later to colonies in Volgograd and Uryupinsk. In each place, Serhiy was beaten, tortured with electric shocks, humiliated, and held in solitary confinement cells, which the prisoners themselves called ‘pits.’
They were given food once a day, and most refused to take Russian citizenship, for which they were beaten even more severely. According to Serhiy, in the summer of 2023, another prisoner died in the colony — a civilian man from Lviv who was beaten to death after refusing to take a Russian passport. During his detention, Serhiy lost weight from 75 to 49 kg and contracted tuberculosis.
After completing his sentence, he was held for several more months by the Russian Federation's migration service, and only in February 2024 was he able to return to Ukraine via Georgia with the assistance of international human rights defenders. Today, Serhiy is undergoing treatment at a tuberculosis dispensary and has official victim status.
The documentation of war crimes is carried out with the financial support of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC). The views and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the NHC. The association systematically documents Russian war crimes, works to free civilians and supports their families.
