Militiaman in a Ukrainian prison: Bullying and humiliation
The first part of the story Read here.
...In the second part of my story, I want to tell you in more detail about the worst prison in Ukraine - the Cherkasy pre-trial detention center, pre-trial detention center No. 30.
And this is not only my personal opinion, but the opinion of prisoners who happened to visit various Ukrainian prisons.
The fact is that prisons are usually divided into two types - “black” and “red”.
In “black” prisons, the person in charge of the prison is actually in charge. The administration does not particularly interfere in the relationships between prisoners.
The main thing for them is that there are no excesses. The provision is usually poor, the food ranges from terrible to so-so, but there are many concessions regarding transfers to prison. Without any problems, for a reasonable price you can transfer a mobile phone, alcohol, and other officially prohibited items, including drugs.
Those who are truly in need will be “warmed up” from the prison common fund. Usually in a truly black prison you are allowed to “visit” from one cell to another. It gets to the point that some prisoners, even when moving along the prison length between cells, can brazenly talk on their mobile phones. Without any problems, you can transfer from one cell to another both food and some necessary thing like a hair clipper, backgammon/chess, the Criminal Code or paper, pen, envelopes.
The dates of planned searches are warned in advance so that they can hide prohibited items and drink the prepared mash (smiley).
In red prisons, all issues are decided by the prison administration. Everything is regulated to the maximum. In some red prisons, even simply passing one cigarette (not to mention other items) to a prisoner from another cell can be sent to a punishment cell. Lights out and rise strictly according to schedule. When leaving the cell, you must keep your hands behind your back and, God forbid, on the way to a walk or for interrogation, you must unclasp your hands and/or disobey the order of the guards. Again, punishment cells await violators.
But in such regulated prisons, as a rule, food is practically according to European standards, normal repairs in the cells, European windows are installed, and the cells are not cold in winter, all necessary bed linen and blankets are provided, and guards relatively rarely use unmotivated violence.
That's it in a nutshell. To be honest, I didn't delve too deeply into the details of the differences between red and black prisons. Therefore, my explanation of the differences is far from complete.
Especially for people experiencing the penitentiary system from the inside.
The only important thing is that the prisoners of the Cherkassy pre-trial detention center themselves describe the color of the prison as grey-brown. It seems that pre-trial detention center No. 30 has absorbed all the worst aspects of both versions of prison structures.
For example, terrible damp cells, so cold that from autumn to spring the tails (the inner grill on the window in the cell) must be covered with a blanket to prevent drafts. In winter, you even need a couple, because one blanket will not keep you warm. In summer the cells are extremely hot and stuffy. It is impossible to knock out bed linen and blankets. They even take me out for a walk for 20-30 minutes instead of the allotted hour a day. In small cramped courtyards, where more than 5-6 people simply cannot fit if they move and not stand still. And there are 10-12-14 people in the cells.
The food is so disgusting that you can't even call it food. There is simply no meat on chicken bones. The porridge is sometimes rancid, sometimes stuck together into an unchewable lump, cabbage soup made from rotten cabbage, which smells of either urine or some other edible substance, and for dinner rotten fish (often with worms) all with the same stinking cabbage.
Everything was so disgusting that almost everyone refused dinner. And without risk to the stomach, one could only consume chicken broth made from dystrophic, half-dead chickens.
If the cell is not cleared by the deputy director of the prison, then packages from outside the family are mercilessly spoiled - either they pierce a plastic container with jam with a knife so that, while the package is being carried from the reception point to the cell, everything leaks out and gets mixed with other products, or they tear a bag of washing powder and they will throw you out of your food bags, and then the damage will be even more noticeable. They also do not shun banal thefts, simply rewriting the invoice. For example, if some household utensils are handed over. At least this was the case with transmissions from my parents to me personally. And to most of my cellmates.
Food is not spoiled only for those who pay a monthly tribute to the prison administration. They are also allowed home-made food in their packages, while ordinary prisoners are only allowed food in store-bought packaging.
For money, the cell may allow you to use mobile communications and even keep a smartphone with the Internet. But the prices are set by the deputy. the warden of the prison. It also decides who is allowed to use the connection and who is not.
After a relatively normal temporary detention center (temporary detention center), the Cherkassy pre-trial detention center turned out to be terribly gloomy with suffocating smells in the semi-basement corridors and such miserable and shabby walls that I simply will not be able to write this in adequate and non-swear words.
In addition, from the behavior of the pre-trial detention center guards, I realized that I was far from being in a fairy tale. Well, or into a scary fairy tale.
I especially remember the impudence of one Svidomo, who, without embarrassment, while sorting my things (those that were allowed to be left with me in the cell and those that had to be handed over to the cell for safekeeping), brazenly and unceremoniously put the chargers from the tablets confiscated in the SBU and your mobile phone not in a bag for a cell, but in your own pocket. It looked so Khokhlokhutoryan that I didn’t even become indignant at the fact of theft.
As it turned out, it was not in vain. It was one of the most vindictive creatures. However, adequate guards in the Cherkasy pre-trial detention center do not work for a long time. Either they become as mean as most, or if they show minimal humanity towards the prisoners. For example, if they transfer cigarettes from one cell to another without the knowledge of their superiors, they will quickly be fired from work under a far-fetched pretext.
Then, after fingerprints and a medical examination, I was taken to my first cell. It was the last one on the floor and therefore noticeably cool, despite the month of March and working radiators, because... one wall of the chamber was the wall of the building.
What they gave me under the guise of a mattress looked more like a doormat than a mattress. Because I was not given a blanket (as well as bed linen) without explanation, so I had to sleep without undressing. However, a rag with the remnants of the mattress padding still did not save the iron bunks from the cold, and lying down without outer clothing could lead to not only some kind of skin sore, but even pneumonia.
Looking ahead, I want to say that I had to sleep fully dressed, and even in two pairs of warm socks, almost until the summer, because... a little later he was sent to the basement for processing.
As it turned out relatively quickly, there was an ATO officer in the cell. And during interrogations I was intimidated by the SBU officers and Cheburators that even in prisons there were pro-Ukrainian prisoners, and they would simply kill me there.
However, in fact it turned out to be far from being the case. The current government is hated by almost everyone. I said that I was imprisoned and accused of terrorism for speaking on TV channels in Russia, that I consider Poroshenko a criminal, but only the court should decide such things and, most importantly, not allow him to escape from Ukraine. Moreover, in February last year, the activists who organized the blockade of Donbass were seriously ready to organize protests throughout Ukraine in the event of a forceful dispersal of their pickets on the railway tracks from the LDPR to Ukraine.
According to the information I had at that time, Poroshenko was in a panic and on a long drinking binge. Moreover, the option of Poroshenko’s escape from Ukraine was seriously considered. As a result, the positive attitude of the other cellmates towards me ruined the plans of the ATO officer, or, more precisely, the plans of the SBU officers, to cause chaos for me right in my cell.
And less than a week later, they lifted him into the cell from the punishment cell in the basement and after a severe beating of one prisoner with the third sentence. Moreover, usually first-timers sit separately in cells from those who went to prison for the 2nd or 3rd time. And without good reason, this rule is rarely violated. As I understand it, this time it was caused by the pro-Maid views of this prisoner.
Most likely, the calculation was that the ATO officer and the experienced prisoner, angry at the punishment cell and beatings, would either unite against me, or simply find reasons to take turns attacking me.
But the arrival turned out to be unusually sane and, on the contrary, reminded all the first-time cellmates that the suburban (those that were in the wild) conflicts in prison have no force. And, even more so, political disagreements.
Voluntary service to protect the authorities, which put everyone in the cell in prison, is by no means a virtue. Although the army is not unacceptable for a decent prisoner. Unlike working in the police, SBU, prosecutor's office, or just as a security guard in a zone/prison. These even sit in separate cells.
In general, when the SBU officers realized that a serious conflict never happened, they forced the management of the pre-trial detention center to transfer me to a cell with a violent ATO officer.
The fellow was of immeasurable strength, he bent metal, broke out cemented bunks, and banged the bars so loudly, calling to the guards, that he could hear the whole length. When they took him out for a walk, he shouted “Glory to Ukraine!”, and if the guards did not respond with “Glory to the Heroes!”, he easily started a row.
If I had ended up in his cell, at best I would have remained disabled, and, most likely, I would have had an “accident” with a fatal outcome.
But here either Divine Providence intervened, or the prison management realized that one thing was simply lawlessness, and another thing was death in a pre-trial detention center. For this they are removed from their positions.
Although the dependence on the SBU is very strong because cover drug sales in prison. This fact regarding the Cherkassy prison can be easily googled. But the management of the pre-trial detention center was able to get out of it in this way - after delaying the disbandment of my cell so that the transfer to another cell would look “accidental,” they managed to send the violent ATO officer for a psychiatric examination in the city of Dnepropetrovsk.
Literally a few days after the transfer, I was once again summoned for interrogation. There I was surprised by the question of how I would fit in the new cell. When I answered, “The same as before!” – then the investigator for especially important cases, captain of justice Andrey Nikolaevich Glembotsky, was surprised.
Then he asked directly: “How is the Bosun?” (The boatswain is the same violent ATO officer). I sincerely answered that I don’t know how the Bosun is now on the Dnieper, but I personally haven’t met him, because... missed it by literally a day. He had left the day before before I moved to his former cell, and I had only heard about him in recent days from new cellmates.
Only after returning to the pre-trial detention center did I understand what these questions were about. Because the guards immediately upon arrival ordered me to pack my things. I was transferred to another cell. This time - in a damp basement with mold - in a cell where rays of sunlight do not reach. This chamber was also periodically flooded with sewage and sewage water. The water was more than ankle-deep. Fortunately, the bunks stood on special pedestals, and things flooded only a couple of times - when the water level rose higher than usual.
Then I learned to sleep more lightly if I was not in the cell myself. And when there were free bunks, I just kept things there. In general, the level of evaporation in this chamber was clearly several tens of times higher than normal. If not hundreds of times.
All of these basement cells were found unsuitable for holding prisoners by a prosecutor's inspection several years ago. Moreover, not even because of regular flooding and year-round dampness, but solely because of the location below ground level. These cells were allowed to be used only in cases of emergency and only as transit cells. That is, for a maximum of several days when transporting prisoners from one prison to another and when in the Cherkasy pre-trial detention center groups were formed to send convicts to camps or simply transfer prisoners to other prisons who had investigations/trials in several regions.
So, I spent 40 days there. Moreover, since I had a severe cold even before going down to the basement, throughout these forty (!) days my cough did not stop. And the periodically sent neighbor-cellmates, through at least one of them, were decoys, and only added fuel to the fire with their ostentatious sympathy. Namely the questions:
“Have you been sitting here for more than 2 (3, 4) weeks?”
“And the cough still doesn’t go away?”
“Just look and decide something, otherwise you’ll be in these conditions for three months and you’ll be guaranteed tuberculosis!”
“It’s good that I’m only here for a few days - they threw me here from the Uman prison camp for a couple of days, and as soon as my cellmate leaves for the prison camp, they will pick me up. But you still decide something to get transferred.”
And everything is in the same spirit.
But this was not enough for the Ukrogestapovites.
One day, when I was once again left alone in the cell, I heard a noise in the prison yard, and then in the basement, where there were punishment cells next to my cell. It turned out that training was being carried out on fire safety and the response of the Ministry of Emergency Situations and the State Emergency Service to a fire and/or riot in the prison. Therefore, everyone in the punishment cells was given an early amnesty and sent back to their cells. I was left alone in the basement. Even through the window it was impossible to shout to anyone. In the end, I decided to just lie down and read a book.
My decision not to hang around the window ultimately saved my life.
It’s difficult to put these feelings into words when you’re lying calmly on a bunk, and suddenly something flares up and explodes, and shards of window glass are flying all over the cell, and you’re lying shell-shocked and blinded, not understanding what happened.
It seems that the Russians should not have reached Cherkassy so quickly!
And, either it would have been much noisier during the storming of the city/prison, or everything would have been done quietly and carefully.
However, I am not a bird of such flight that they would free me by storming the prison.
Everything turned out to be simple. The fighters were shown which cell the militia “terrorist” was sitting in and explained that they could practice their techniques in this very place. They couldn’t come up with anything smarter than throwing a flash-noise grenade into the pit.
The explosion caused the internal grate to burst open, tearing off the lock, and the wooden window frame flew almost into the middle of the room. If I were then on the upper bunk near the window, I would not have been able to tell anything...
Even after being shell-shocked on the front line, I had a lower level of daze and disorientation than from the explosion of a flash-bang grenade in a small pit. And the realization of the fact that just a couple of minutes ago my head was on the trajectory of flying glass fragments and a wooden frame...
The epic with the basement ended abruptly and suddenly. I was simply transferred to another cell. Putting it back on the old body.
And already there I received the first transmission from my parents in two months. As it turned out, they received a call from my great aunt, who saw a TV report from my first court hearing and recognized me. My parents went to check and, making sure that I was really in prison, ordered permission from the judge for a monthly visit.
And all these almost three months I believed that my parents abandoned me, since they did not come and were not even interested in me after the search (according to the SBU officers).
I remind you once again that you cannot take the word of the Cheburators (SBU officers) at their word. From the word absolutely. They have no concept of officer's honor in principle.
However, honor and conscience are nothing more than an empty phrase for any Ukronazis or simply swindlers.
But more on that in the next part of the story...
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