“I lost 18 kilos in there, and came out with grey hair,” says Larisa Fesenko, 63-year-old head and English teacher at Lisnistenkiv Secondary School in Lista Stinka, which is in the Kupiansk region of north-east Ukraine. During the Russian occupation of 2022, she spent nearly 45 days in the cells of the Kupiansk police station. According to the Ukrainian police and public prosecutor’s office, this was where one of the largest Russian torture centres in the Kharkiv region was located.
Fesenko is one of 87 victims in the Koupiansk torture centre case. Arrested on July 26, 2022, she was put in a cramped cell, where 10 to 20 other detainees were crammed onto a concrete floor covered with linoleum. “In July, the Russians abducted me straight from my home. They put a bag over my head, handcuffed me, and then took me to the torture centre,” she recounts. “I remember that day, July 26, and I will never forget it.”
The reason for her arrest? During a search of her home, the Russians found Ukrainian symbols, including a national flag that this head teacher had brought back from her school. Whilst she was striving to preserve the school’s heritage and maintain team cohesion, some of her colleagues chose to collaborate with the aggressor, according to her own account. “I was told that I would not be released under any circumstances, because I had arrived there with symbols. I was one of the political prisoners,” Fesenko continues.
Electric shocks
The teacher says she did not betray her convictions, maintaining a pro-Ukrainian stance both at the time of her arrest and during interrogations. And she considers herself lucky: unlike others, she was subjected to neither physical violence nor electric shocks during her two interrogations, only sometimes threatened with sending her “to Belgorod” (a Russian city across the border to the north of Kharkiv), or putting her “among the deserters”. “The air in the cell was stifling. No light filtered through the windows, and we weren’t taken out into the open air,” she recalls. “We were barely fed – just noodles twice a day.”
“My place was on the floor, between two bunk beds. The toilet was in the same room,” says Fesenko. “Two people were on the bunk beds, but everyone else was on the floor – some under the beds, others near the toilet. Industrial water ran from the tap. We used it to wash and to drink.”
According to the prosecutor’s office, the arrests were unfounded and the guards forced prisoners to sing the Russian national anthem, punched and kicked them, and subjected them to electric shocks. “After the electric shocks, I had an operation on my hands. But I still haven’t regained full sensation. My hands haven’t fully regained their function,” says one of the victims quoted by the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office.
Screams every night
“At night, we could constantly hear footsteps in the corridor. They were taking people away. We sat there and could hear someone being tortured,” recalls the teacher. “The cells were open, and we could hear everything. A young man was beaten until he lost his voice, until he fell completely silent. Can you imagine? And it was like that every night.”
“They made us march down the corridor in handcuffs, in a duck walk – just to mock us,” a 45-year-old entrepreneur also detained at the centre told investigators. Sometimes the guards mocked executions, or forced people to dig graves for themselves and others.
After her second interrogation, Fesenko lost consciousness. She believes that was when she suffered a mini-stroke. Her unlawful detention continues to affect her life: her chronic conditions have worsened and, this year she was diagnosed with diabetes, which she believes she developed in that centre.
“I had gone completely grey”
Fesenko remembers the night of her release on September 8, 2022, in minute detail. At that time, the Ukrainian counter-offensive was in full swing. The Ukrainian armed forces liberated Balakliya, Izium, several villages and towns, and then it was the turn of Kupiansk. As the Russians fled, the detainees at the torture centre regained their freedom.
“A man managed to get out of his cell. He opened all the cells, and we got out at one o’clock in the morning. When I returned to the village, the wind was literally buffeting me along the road. I didn’t recognise myself anymore. I was completely grey, utterly grey. The women who came to visit me were in tears when they saw my hands,” recalls Fesenko.
In recent years, the security situation in Lisna Stinka has deteriorated. The village, situated near the front line, has been the target of strikes, notably by Russian drones. As a result, the secondary school in Lisna Stinka has ceased operations. The children were transferred to the secondary school in Hlushkiv, in the municipality of Kurylivka, which has been relocated to Kharkiv.
“I am currently an internally displaced person in Kharkiv. I moved because the pupils from my secondary school were also evacuated here,” says Fesenko. “I’m renting a room. My house in Lisna Stinka was near the secondary school. It was damaged when a bomb struck the school grounds. The secondary school was also destroyed: a three-tonne bomb hit it on the same day. And that wasn’t the only one. All that remains of the school building is rubble. I don’t know what has become of my house.”
“Torture centre” case brought before the courts
The Ukrainian intelligence services, in collaboration with the police, have identified 18 people – Russian military personnel and local residents suspected of collaboration – who, according to the investigation, organised a criminal group and ran a torture centre from March to September 2022. The names of the suspects were made public on December 28, 2025, by the general intelligence directorate of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry. Charges brought under the Ukrainian Criminal Code are as follows: violations of the laws and customs of war, committed jointly by a group of people; and acts of collaboration.
“According to information at our disposal, the war criminals were holding at least 150 people in this detention centre and torture chamber. It is known for certain that two citizens were tortured there. Ten other people are missing,” stated the intelligence directorate.
December 2026 will mark one year since the case concerning prisoners released from the Kupiansk detention centre was referred to the Osnovyansky District Court in Kharkiv. According to the indictment, 77 men and 10 women have been recognised as victims.
“This trial is unprecedented, as the case involves 18 defendants, two of whom are actually present [two former Ukrainian law enforcement officers already serving sentences for collaboration], whilst the other 16 are wanted,” says Nikita Daloka, the prosecutor in charge of the case. “They are represented by 11 defence lawyers, and the case involves 87 victims.” Evidence gathered after liberation of Kupiansk in 2022 forms the basis of the case. At present, the town is inaccessible for investigative purposes. The Russians are not giving up on their intention to seize it a second time.
Absent victims and lawyers
However, after nearly a year, the proceedings are still in their early stages. So far, it has not even been possible to organise a proper preliminary hearing. This is constantly being postponed, either because the victims are absent or because the defence lawyers fail to appear. Sometimes the defence lawyers do not turn up because they are attending other hearings.
“The law stipulates that preparatory hearings must be held in the mandatory presence of all participants in the criminal proceedings, except in cases provided for by law,” Daloka points out. “The Public Prosecutor’s Office and the victims’ representative take steps to inform the parties of the hearing. Furthermore, the court issues summonses, and we inform the victims: if they do not wish to attend the hearing, they may submit a statement requesting that the preliminary hearing be held in their absence.”
However, not all victims have requested that the hearings be held in their absence, and it is impossible to contact some of them. “We have managed to trace some of the victims; we are still looking for the others,” says Daloka.
On November 2, the hearing was postponed once again. Not all the defence lawyers were present, and some of the victims could not be contacted. “It is true that some of the victims did not give their consent for the case to be heard in their absence. There are not many of them – about ten at most. But it is also difficult to bring together all the defence lawyers for the accused. They must all be present,” notes Tamila Bespala, the victims’ representative.
Two Ukrainian defendants already in prison
Defendants Sergei Vergeles, 56, and Volodymyr Shabounine, 31 -- both former law enforcement officers -- were already sentenced in 2023 to 13 years and 15 years’ imprisonment respectively, for collaborating with the aggressor,
“At present, they are serving their sentences and are taking part in our hearing, for the time being via videoconference. One of them was serving with the police during the occupation of Kupiansk; the other was a retired employee of the Interior Ministry,” explains Daloka. “When the occupiers began setting up their own police force, he was invited back into service, which he accepted, and began collaborating with them.”
According to the prosecutor, during the occupation, Shabounine voluntarily held the post of “escort service chief in the Internal Affairs Directorate of Kharkiv region Provisional Civil Administration” within an illegally constituted police body, whilst Vergeles became a “police trainee” within the same directorate.
“Acting in concert on the orders of unidentified leaders in the armed formations, law enforcement agencies and occupying authorities of the Russian Federation -- driven by a common criminal intent and aware of the socially dangerous nature of their actions, having given prior consent to commission of the crimes -- unlawfully detained civilians during a period not established in the preliminary investigation but between 27 February 2022 and 8 September 2022,” states the indictment. It says they held these prisoners “on the premises of the Kupiansk police station, in particular in the cells of the temporary detention centre located at the following address: 14 Kharkivska Street, Kupiansk, Kharkiv region, where these individuals were held in unsanitary conditions that were physically exhausting, with limited rations of food and water, and without medical care”.
“The victims sustained bodily injuries as a result of being struck with bare hands, kicked, beaten with sticks and other objects, and subjected to electric shocks,” states the prosecution. “Whilst sustaining these injuries, the detainees were forced to provide false information about themselves and their family members. The victims were systematically threatened with death and with the arrest of their relatives and family members.”
It is too early to say whether the two defendants will plead guilty. This will only be addressed during the next stages of the proceedings. The full text of the indictment runs to 170 pages. During the hearing of the cases for which these former law enforcement officers have already been convicted, Vergeles did not admit his guilt, whilst Shabounine expressed remorse.
In the “torture centre” case, Shabounine fully admits his guilt, according to his lawyer, Anatoli Souproun. Vergeles’s lawyer Irina Krutko says she will not comment on this matter for the time being without discussing it with her client, but that the cases of defendants already serving sentences should be examined separately.
“The case is very extensive; there are numerous defendants,” she notes. “Even the online court system is struggling to cope with such a large number of participants. If we conclude the preliminary hearing and are given the opportunity to submit motions, I will request that the case [concerning Vergeles] be dealt with in separate proceedings.”
“Organised violence”
In the Kharkiv region, a total 68 people have been charged with acts of ill-treatment and torture committed during the 2022 occupation. “These include soldiers from the ‘LNR’ [Luhansk People’s Republic] and ‘DNR’ [Donetsk People’s Republic], servicemen from the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, officers of the Russian National Guard, the national police and the FSB [Russian intelligence services], as well as Ukrainian citizens who collaborated with the occupying authorities,” says Spartak Borisenko, head of the department for fighting crimes committed in armed conflict at the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office.
By September 2026 there were more than 1,500 victims of these acts, according to him. However, these figures are not definitive: some people have left the country, whilst others are missing.
In late August 2026, the Ukrainian civil society human rights organisation Truth Hounds, in partnership with the US-based NGO Project Expedite Justice (PEJ), presented the findings of a joint report entitled “Organised Violence: the Russian network of illegal detentions and torture in the Kharkiv region”, which is based on the testimonies of 114 victims of Russian crimes and witnesses. The researchers identified 29 Russian torture centres in the Kharkiv region, all of which shared the same structure and employed the same methods of interrogation and torture, which, they argue, proves the systematic nature of these crimes.
“Although these torture centres were located in different parts of the Kharkiv region, with the distance between some of them reaching 150 kilometres, they shared common characteristics, which could indicate that they were part of an organised system,” said Ashot Agayan, a representative of the PEJ, during presentation of the report. “We have identified the following common characteristics: organisational (choice of buildings, transport of detainees between torture centres); functional (the division of roles between main and transit torture centres); in terms of personnel (division of responsibilities amongst the occupying forces); and methods of torture (beatings, electric shocks, sexual violence).”
Four years after her detention in the Kupiansk “torture centre”, Fesenko regrets that her former secondary school had to close. But despite the ill treatment she endured during the occupation, loss of her home and job, and the betrayal of her colleagues, she has not given up on her passion: she teaches English online to beginners in schools in the Pecheniz and Valkiv municipalities. She also continues to expose Russian crimes to the world. In 2023, she received the Global Teacher Prize Ukraine in the “Resilience” category. And in 2025, she received the Anna Lindh Prize, awarded by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. “I believe those who committed atrocities or collaborated with the Russians should be punished,” she says. “And not just lightly for show.”
This is an edited version of a longer article published on Mediaport. This article was made through a grant by Fondation Hirondelle / Justice Info.
