Tuesday, September 20. Russia’s War On Ukraine: Daily News And Information

Dispatches from Ukraine. Tuesday, September 20. Day 209.

As Russia’s attack on Ukraine continues and the war rages on, reliable sources of information are critical. Forbes gathers information and provides updates on the situation.

By Polina Rasskazova

A secret torture chamber was found in Izium, in the Kharkiv region, where a Russian military group from Chechnya, Dagestan and Ossetia carried out abuses on local residents. In the building that used to be a police department before the Russian forces occupied Izium, Russian troops set up a jail where 24 prisoners were held in six cells, said Taras Berezovets, the press officer of the Ivan Bohun’s Special Forces Brigade.

Prisoners were tortured with electric shock and physical force and were kept in terrible living conditions. In a video taken by Berezovets, an inscription was found on the wall in one of the cells that read: ” God, save and keep me alive.” Reportedly, prisoners have been shocked with do-it-yourself electric chair and castrated.

According to the investigators, ordinary citizens were abducted by Russians mainly for the sake of collecting ransom from their family and loved ones, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies reported. At least 10 torture chambers where Russian forces conducted abuse on mainly local population have been found in de-occupied areas of Kharkiv region.

More than 2,000 Ukrainian children were illegally taken to Russia. “…we are talking about 2,161 children. This is what we know as of September 1,” said Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, talking to Suspilne media journalists during a trip to the Kharkiv region. These are children deprived of parental care. By the way, we have already returned 55 of them.”

Russian guardianship is pending for most of the deported Ukrainian children, which is a violation of international rights. “We did not allow to adopt and in some form ensure the residence of our children on the territory of the aggressor state,” Vereshchuk added. “We demand the return of our children, we appeal to the international community to do everything to make Russia pay. That is, to strengthen sanctions for the fact that today our children are illegally staying on the territory of the Russian Federation.”

Russia is planning to hold pseudo-referendums in the occupied territories – Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – to absorb Ukrainian land and people. Volodymyr Saldo, who currently heads the occupation administration in the Kherson region, recorded a video message on his Telegram channel about the decision to hold a referendum on the entry of the Kherson region into the Russian Federation. “I am convinced that the Russian people and president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, will act as guarantors of the security and prosperity of our region,” he said. A Russian collaborationist has already signed a document to conduct a referendum between September 23 through the 27th.

Three Russian military soldiers who took part in the occupation of the village of Yahidne in the Chernihiv region will be tried for the brutal mistreatment of civilians.

The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine reports that, according to its investigation, armed Russian soldiers forcibly entered the homes of civilians and randomly fired automatic bursts into the premises where people and children were hiding. Additionally, the Russian military illegally deprived residents of their freedom, locking them for three days in the cellar of their own home and limiting their access to water, food, and fresh air.

The accused also took local residents outdoors in sub-zero temperatures and, threatening to shoot them, forced them to undress in mixed company. Showing excessive cruelty, they used physical violence against the victims for no reason, beating civilians with automatic weapons.

50 women from the “Azov” regiment are in Russian captivity, two of them are pregnant, says the head of the ‘Azov’ patronage service, Olena Tolkachova, in an interview with Ukrainian Pravda. “According to our agreement, the women were supposed to leave just after the exchange of the seriously wounded. We have two pregnant women there, one from ‘Azov,’ the other is either a border guard or a marine. The one who is not from ‘Azov,’ is about to give birth, the other one is in the fourth month of pregnancy,” she reported. Russian forces refuse to free the two pregnant women.