The scale of torture in Kherson during the Russian occupation of the city in southern Ukraine is “appalling,” a high-ranking Ukrainian official said Thursday, AFP reports.

“I have not seen such a scale of torture, having visited all the torture centers in different parts of Ukraine,” parliamentary human rights defender Dmytro Lubinets said on state television. “The scale of the phenomenon is terrible,” he said.

Dozens of people “were electrocuted, beaten with metal pipes, their bones were broken,” and “the Russians filmed everything,” he accused. “I am sure that a torture chamber will be found in every important city. Because this is a system created by Russia,” Lubinets said.

The Ukrainian authorities announced that they had discovered several torture chambers in the districts of the Kherson region, recently seized from the Russians after months of occupation.

A resident of Kherson told AFP that he was detained in the city for weeks during its occupation. He stated that during his detention Russian and pro-Russian officials tied him up, beat him and electrocuted him.

11 isolation cells and 63 corpses

Ukrainian war crimes investigators found 11 detention centers in recently liberated areas of Kherson region and evidence that “torture” was used in four of them, Ukrainian Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi said Wednesday evening, CNN reports.

“11 detention centers were discovered, torture was used in four of them,” Denys Monastyrskyi told Ukrainian television with reference to News.ro.

After Russian troops retreated across the Dnipro last week, Ukrainian forces have retaken most of Kherson Oblast, including the regional capital.

Ukrainian police and special services are trying to gather evidence, “recording every act of torture, finding witnesses, and also exhuming the bodies of the dead,” Monatyrskyi said.

Although he did not specify the location of the detention centers, he said that 63 bodies had been recovered so far.

CNN says it cannot independently verify Denys Monastyrskyi’s claims.

Russia denies allegations of war crimes and maintains that its forces do not attack civilians, despite extensive evidence gathered from multiple sources by international human rights experts, forensic investigators and international news agencies.

Oleksandr Malkevich, a member of the People’s Chamber of the Russian Federation, an advisory body that is mostly made up of pro-government figures, said in an interview with the Russian radio station Sputnik on Tuesday that Ukraine plans to accuse the Russian military of committing the uncovered crimes. in Kherson.

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