Friday began with explosions over Dnipro. By the time I eventually reached the railway station later that afternoon, reports were already emerging that incoming Shahed drones had been detected dangerously close to the area.
Passengers were hurried onto the train, only to be ordered straight back off moments later as air raid sirens echoed across the city. We made our way into an underground shelter while explosions reverberated around the station complex overhead.
That was the backdrop as I travelled to Kyiv to meet journalist Chris Sampson of The Wire Tap, who has spent much of the last four years reporting from wartime Ukraine.
Even travelling across the country has developed its own strange wartime routine. Power banks are packed automatically, Telegram alert channels remain permanently open, and every journey quietly carries the same unspoken question: whether the infrastructure will still be functioning by the time you return home.
The main purpose of my journey was to attend and cover the “Made in Russia, Delivered into Captivity” conference in Kyiv, an event focused on documenting the systemic torture and abuse of Ukrainian prisoners of war inside Russian captivity. For me, it also carried personal significance as somebody who was captured in Mariupol and later held by Russia myself.
The contrast felt impossible to ignore, and when Chris first told me about the event, I was immediately interested in seeing how far the conversation surrounding Russian captivity, accountability, and international pressure had progressed over the last several years.
I’ve visited facilities holding Russian prisoners of war in Ukraine, interviewed foreign recruited fighters serving with the Russian Army and seen the conditions they are kept in. But I also wanted answers to difficult questions surrounding why certain categories of prisoners appear harder to exchange than others, particularly Azov fighters, foreign volunteers serving Ukraine and those who fought for the country despite not being born there.
It remains one of the most sensitive and politically complicated aspects of the war.
So leaving one Ukrainian city under bombardment to travel to another city to discuss war crimes, torture and international law, while the threat of further Russian strikes loomed over the capital itself, no longer really feels strange. In many ways, it’s simply where life has led and, for me, just another day.
While I don’t often blow my own trumpet, it is also a subject I probably understand more intimately than most people in the room, certainly from the perspective of somebody who has lived through Russian captivity firsthand. That was exactly why Chris thought the event would interest me.
By the time I arrived in Kyiv, the atmosphere was tense but familiar. Cafés remained open, commuters filled the streets and life carried on in the way it somehow still does across wartime Ukraine.
I’m still, even after eight years, always struck by the beauty of Kyiv despite four years of war. Spring is one of my favourite times of year in Ukraine and crossing the river on the metro, I was genuinely astonished by how green the capital looked. Rising above it all stood the towering Motherland Monument, still one of the most impressive sights in the city as I travelled down the Green Line towards the left bank to meet Chris.
It was only later I fully appreciated the symbolism of the location itself. The event was held beneath the towering Motherland Monument at Kyiv’s War Museum, a place that archives both the brutal history of past wars and Russia’s modern-day aggression against Ukraine.
Standing there overlooking Kyiv, listening to testimonies of torture, captivity and survival, the setting felt profoundly fitting. The giant steel figure rising above the city almost seemed to stand silently listening herself, watching over the stories of another generation forced into war.
Below her, survivors spoke of electric shocks, beatings, starvation and years spent inside Russian prisons. Families spoke of loved ones still missing, still trapped somewhere deep inside occupied territory or Russia itself. Officials discussed war crimes, accountability and a system of abuse that many believe has become industrial in scale.
And all of it unfolded beneath one of the most recognizable symbols of Ukraine’s endurance and sacrifice.
Former prisoners of war, human rights representatives, Ukrainian officials and the families of those still held captive spoke openly about torture, psychological abuse and the systematic mistreatment of Ukrainian POWs.
Among those present were Dmytro Lubinets, representatives from the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, officials from Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters on the Treatment of Prisoners of War, members of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), investigators from the Media Initiative for Human Rights, representatives of the Association of Families of the Defenders of Azovstal, as well as former Azov fighters and survivors of Russian captivity themselves.
According to figures presented during the event, between 90 and 95 percent of released Ukrainian prisoners of war report experiencing torture or cruel treatment during captivity. Officials and investigators described beatings, electric shocks, starvation, sexual violence, denial of medical care and prolonged psychological abuse as standard practice rather than isolated incidents, with Ukrainian officials documenting well over 600 recognised forms of torture reportedly used throughout the Russian detention system.
As I listened, I found myself mentally counting the methods used on me personally. Starvation. Electrocution. Beatings. Isolation. Manipulation. Psychological pressure. Public humiliation for propaganda and media purposes.
Then I stopped counting.
Because the reality is, there were far more than several used in my own case alone, and almost every testimony I listened to, not just throughout the day, but every testimony, sounded disturbingly familiar.
The details change slightly depending on the prison, the guards or the location, but the patterns remain almost identical. That was perhaps the most striking part of the conference, hearing testimony after testimony from former prisoners and recognising the same methods repeated over and over again.
And I’ve listened to a lot of these stories over the years.
Yet one testimony still genuinely shocked me.
Former prisoners described a barber inside one of the detention facilities who, while shaving prisoners’ heads, would deliberately slice chunks of skin from their scalps. When the prisoners screamed in pain, they would then be beaten even further until they stopped reacting.
By all accounts, it was not an isolated act of cruelty but a routine occurrence.
That is chilling to the bone.
Not simply because of the brutality itself, but because of the calculated normality of it all. A system where even something as basic as a haircut becomes another method of humiliation, punishment and control. Perhaps that was the most disturbing part of the entire conference, not the violence alone, but how organised, routine and industrialised it all sounded.
These were not random acts of sadism. They were repeated patterns, repeated methods and repeated behaviour described by prisoners returning from entirely different facilities, hundreds or even thousands of kilometres apart, something I also write about in my book Live.Fight.Survive.
It was also something I experienced personally.
And while I had received some limited resistance-to-interrogation and survival training from my military background, certainly more than most Ukrainian civilians or volunteers would ever receive, nothing fully prepares you for the psychological reality of prolonged captivity and systematic abuse.
That, more than anything, told me this pointed towards something far darker than isolated brutality, although to pretend I didn’t already know that would be a lie.
But hearing the individuals themselves, the details, the emotion and the repetition of the same methods from completely different prisons only reinforced what many of us already believed.
It points to a system.
What stood out throughout the day was the repeated emphasis that this was not being described as the actions of individual rogue guards or isolated prison facilities, but as a coordinated system operating across multiple detention centres throughout Russia and occupied Ukraine.
I find testimonies are always difficult to listen to, and I am already familiar with the realities of Russian captivity.
One Azov fighter described Russian prisons as “a branch of hell on earth.” Another recounted prisoners dying from untreated illnesses and injuries while packed into overcrowded cells. It made me think of Paul Urey, the British NGO worker who was beaten to death, dying from his injuries in the cell next to mine. The crushing realism of it all suddenly felt painfully immediate again.
Others described being beaten specifically on existing wounds during intake procedures or threatened with violence against their families if they refused to cooperate during fabricated criminal cases.
One of the final moments that stood out for me personally was being able to ask a question directly to Dmytro Lubinets regarding foreign volunteers and servicemen held in Russian captivity, particularly those who were not born in Ukraine but legally served within Ukrainian formations.
I am a product of Ukrainian prisoner exchanges myself, so being able to raise the issue of foreign volunteers captured by Russia was important.
I asked about those serving in the Ukrainian military who were not necessarily born in Ukraine, including cases like Hayden Davies,… https://t.co/Vo0cRgBqDe pic.twitter.com/IlzPQCtcy3
— Shaun Pinner (@ShaunPinnerUA) May 25, 2026
It remains an often overlooked aspect of the war.
During the discussions, officials revealed that Ukraine has verified 186 detention facilities holding Ukrainian prisoners across Russia and occupied territories, while more than 2,100 Ukrainian POWs have reportedly already been illegally sentenced through Russian courts. Officials also stated that at least 149 Ukrainian prisoners of war have been tortured to death, while hundreds more have died in captivity under horrific conditions.
Foreign volunteers captured by Russia have frequently been used for propaganda purposes, while international legal protections appear selectively applied depending on Moscow’s political objectives. The issue continues to raise difficult questions surrounding prisoner status, international law and accountability.
In many cases, Russia refuses to recognise foreign volunteers, particularly those born outside Ukraine, as legitimate prisoners of war despite their legal status serving within Ukrainian forces. British nationals especially have repeatedly been singled out for propaganda, including myself, for political leverage and media spectacle.
My question to Lubinets focused specifically on what mechanisms actually exist for protecting foreign volunteers in captivity when Russia refuses access to humanitarian organisations, international observers or even consular representatives.
The uncomfortable answer is: very few.
Any possible pressure Russia believes it can exert on the governments of the UK or Ukraine is squeezed from these prisoners, because ultimately that is part of the role played by the Russian security services, to weaponise captives for political and psychological advantage wherever possible.
And if Russia refuses humanitarian organisations, international observers or consular representatives meaningful access to check on prisoners’ welfare, then in reality there is often very little anybody can do about it beyond continued diplomatic pressure.
That is precisely why meetings like this matter so much.
Because public attention, documentation and testimony may be one of the few forms of pressure still available and if Russia genuinely wants to return to the real world diplomatically, politically and economically, then eventually it will have to face the growing legal and humanitarian liabilities now building around it like a legal tsunami.
But while these discussions unfolded inside Kyiv, the wider reality of the war continued outside. In Ukraine, even conferences discussing war crimes take place under the shadow of possible missile strikes.
As the event concluded and I prepared to leave Kyiv later that evening, warnings were already beginning to circulate online regarding the possibility of another significant Russian aerial assault.
For Ukrainians, this isn’t politics or headlines, it’s daily life.
On Saturday, Embassy advisories had been issued. Monitoring channels tracked unusual Russian aviation activity. There was a growing sense that something larger than usual might be coming.
A few hours after I departed the capital, those fears became reality.
Russia launched one of the largest aerial assaults seen against Kyiv in recent months, reportedly using a mixture of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shahed drones and decoy UAVs in an attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian air defences through sheer volume.
Fires broke out across several areas of the city while civilian casualties and damage were once again reported.
The timing felt almost symbolic.
Only hours earlier, inside conference halls in Kyiv, survivors of Russian captivity had been speaking about torture, abuse and Russia’s disregard for international law. By nightfall, the same city was once again enduring another mass aerial assault against civilian areas.
One moment you are discussing the Geneva Conventions, accountability and war crimes. The next, ballistic missiles are incoming and families are sheltering underground while air defences fight wave after wave of drones overhead.
Travelling from bombed Dnipro to Kyiv for a conference on Russian captivity, only to leave shortly before one of the largest attacks on the capital in months, was another reminder that nowhere in Ukraine is ever truly separate from this war.
The frontline may sit hundreds of kilometres away, but the war itself stretches into every city, every railway station, every interrupted night’s sleep and every family waiting for loved ones to return home.
And despite everything, Ukraine continues moving.
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