According to human rights groups, hundreds of peaceful citizens of Ukraine were illegally imprisoned in Russia. The luckiest of them are used as a bargaining chip during the exchange of captives. On Monday, as part of such an exchange, 108 women were released from Russian captivity.

According to CNN, some of these Ukrainian women alleged that their captors mistreated them severely, including electric shocks and simulated drowning.

The Ukrainian state news agency Ukrinform interviewed one of them, calling her only Hanna O. She is 26 years old, Ukrinform notes, and served in the 36th marine brigade.

Hanna O. was at the metallurgical plant “Azovstal” in Mariupol, but left when the Russians started shelling it. She stated that she spent a little more than six months in captivity. “They treated us like animals,” Hanna claimed.

“They beat the girls, tortured them with electric shocks, beat them with hammers, but this is not the worst thing. The Russians also hanged them,” she says.

“Those who had tattoos … wanted to cut off our hands, cut off the tattoos, poured boiling water on us just because you were there, because you were with the Marines, because you spoke Ukrainian,” she said. .

International law clearly states that civilians must be treated as protected persons and cannot be held as prisoners of war. Forcible transfer of the civilian population of Ukraine to another country is a war crime.

According to a Human Rights Watch report in July, “international humanitarian law also prohibits the taking of hostages. The detention of civilians for the purpose of using them in future prisoner exchanges would constitute a war crime in the form of hostage-taking.”