Inside Taganrog: beatings, electrocution and starvation at prison where Ukrainians were tortured

<p>Russia is holding an estimated 16,000 civilians in arbitrary detention at 180 separate facilities. Taganrog was the most notorious.</p><p>Some weeks after being detained as she attempted to leave a Russian-occupied part of Ukraine in January 2023, Yelyzaveta Shylyk<strong> </strong>was given a polygraph test. As her interrogators attached the lie detector’s wires to her, they calmly issued a threat about what would happen if she failed the test: “You’ll go to a place where you’ll regret being born.”</p><p>That place, she would later find out, had a name: Sizo number 2, a pre-trial detention centre in the southern Russian city of Taganrog.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/30/inside-taganrog-beatings-electrocution-and-starvation-at-prison-where-ukrainians-were-tortured">Continue reading...</a>