“I remember Dmytro Khyliuk as being very thin, covered in demodicosis rash.” A former POW’s account
Russian troops abducted Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk from his own front yard on March 3, 2022, when a part of Kyiv oblast was occupied. This happened in Kozarovychi village north of Kyiv. Dmytro and his father Vasyl had just come out of the bomb shelter to check if their house was damaged; the Russians were already waiting for them in the front yard.
The two men were kept hostage nearby: at a local factory, but in different rooms, so they could not see each other. On March 8 they were taken to another makeshift prison set up on the premises of Viknaland firm in Dymer. That was where Dmytro and Vasyl were separated for good: the journalist was taken to the Hostomel airport and his father was free to go home.
Dmytro Khyliuk was taken from Hostomel to the Bryansk region in Russia, to detention centre No. 2 in Novozybkov. The letter—the only message Dmytro’s parents have received from their son in the three years of captivity—arrived from there. “My dear Mom and Dad, I’m alive and well. I’m doing okay. Dima,” the letter said, dated April 2022. The parents did not receive it until August 2022.
In the summer of 2024, a Ukrainian serviceman named Ihor, who had shared a cell with Dmytro for a year as a POW, came back home. According to Reporters Without Borders, who talked to Ihor, the journalist was in colony No. 7 in Pakino (Vladimir region, Russia). Dmytro had lost a lot of weight and, as per Ihor’s estimations, weighed around 45 kilograms.
There was no news of Dmytro for nearly a year after that. In March 2025, Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets said at a briefing that the only response Russia would give him concerning Khyliuk was, “His state is satisfactory.” In July 2025, Reporters Without Borders reported that a former POW called Vlad, who was back in Ukraine, had briefly met Dmytro in the Pakino prison shortly before being swapped: the journalist had had no visible marks on his body from physical abuse, but had looked thin and had likely had demodicosis.
The author of this article, Stas Kozliuk, found Vlad, visited him in the hospital, and interviewed him about life in prison, Russian propaganda, and Dmytro Khyliuk for the Institute of Mass Information. Below is Vlad’s account summarized.
Vlad is a marine. The full-scale invasion saw him in Donetsk oblast; the Russian troops took him prisoner from the Illich plant in Mariupol on April 14, 2022. He was then taken to Sartana (Donetsk oblast, Ukraine), to a barrack complex that appeared to be a food warehouse. Two days later, the soldiers were moved to a colony in Olenivka. The Olenivka inmates were then sorted into lists: whosever name was called would be blindfolded, tied up, loaded onto a tent-covered truck and taken somewhere. No one would explain where. This is how Vlad ended up in Taganrog and then taken by plane to detention centre No. 2 in Kamyshin (Volgograd region, Russia).
There, they were “welcomed” by the local Federal Penitentiary Service (FPS) officers. Some prisoners died from the beating. Others were later visited by Investigative Committee people from Moscow, who accused the soldiers of various crimes and gave them “confessions” to sign. In the morning of October 1, Vlad was loaded into a riot police van and driven to Pakino, to colony No. 7. (According to Reporters Without Borders, Dmytro Khyliuk was moved to the Pakino colony No. 7 in May 2023.)
“You’re in hell now”
The situation was no better in Pakino. The prisoners arrived there on October 2. Coming out of the vans, they were “welcomed” again, the guards greeting them with one phrase: “You’re in hell now, bitches.”
The interrogations continued in the colony. Both local investigators and officers from what appeared to be the Federal Security Service worked there. The “criminal cases” were sent in from Kamyshin shortly after the POWs. Whenever the inmates would say that they would like to amend the testimonies they had given at the detention centre, they were advised against doing that: they would be “in trouble” otherwise. Any morning, the cell door could open and anyone’s name could be called out. This meant you had to go to the second floor of building No. 1, to a large room resembling a library and a gym at the same time. There was a desk and two chairs in the center. The interrogation would feature an investigator, the colony’s chief operative, and a person wearing a Russian army uniform. All three would carefully read the “case” filed in Kamyshin. Two prison guards would be present as well.
Disavowing your “confession” would be a problem: as soon as you told them that what the papers said was false, the Russians would start quoting the “case.” If you insisted that it was false, you would get beaten. You could get beaten before an interrogation (or “questioning,” as the Russians called it), too. With whatever: hands, feet, stools, even a garbage bin. Or they could put one over your head and start hitting it. Often they would beat the prisoners on the feet heavily with clubs and batons: some were unable to stand upright for 3 or 4 days afterwards. Then again, sometimes the Russians would change their mind a few days after the fact and confirm that the events in the “confession” never happened.
At these “questionings” the prisoners would also be given a statement to sign saying that Donetsk and Luhansk were Russian territories. Guards armed with batons would stand behind their back as they signed it—for added confidence.
Vlad would constantly get asked about phosphorus bombs: how and where he used them. All of his attempts to explain that they could not have used this kind of weapons would be met with arguments to convince him otherwise.
The interrogations ended for Vlad in March 2023. Some of the inmates were later taken to occupied Donetsk for “trial.”
Sleeping with the lights on and Russian propaganda
The torture and beatings were not limited to interrogations alone. The prisoners were mistreated at other times as well. For instance, on their first day in the colony they were told the rules they had to obey. These included a ban on talking in Ukrainian: “No speaking khokhol, or we’ll cut your tongue off,” the guards said.
At first, the inmates would get taken out for mock executions: the guards would summon one of the men and take him out into the hallway. Some shots would be fired with blank cartridges. Then the prisoner would get smeared with something red and the guards would shout, “Get the bags, let’s pack him up.” The “executed” prisoners would then be taken to cell No. 10 in building No. 1. They were told to be silent and the daily checks were done very quietly so that inmates in the other cells would not realize that there could be living people inside. Vlad recalls that at least one of those “executed” was a civilian.
The prisoners would be taken outside for a 10 to 40 minute walk. The walks would take place in what Vlad assumes to be dog enclosures. Sometimes, the prisoners would be involved in a game of “football:” they would be lined up against a wall, a guard standing in front of them. Other guards would then kick the ball, which he had to catch. If he failed, the ball hit the prisoners.
The POWs were fed three times a day, but poorly. The soup looked like seasoned water. No vegetables. Sometimes freeze-dried potatoes would be served. Or rotten potatoes. These meals caused the inmates to start losing weight rapidly. Vlad weighed no more than 55 kilograms. Of course, every now and then the prisoners would go through medical checks, which involved weighing. They would be given bigger portions of food shortly before that, and a little kettlebell would be put on the weights. All prisoners would be photographed for the record, but with the kettlebell out of the frame.
The cells were large but could contain 10 to 15 people, with 5 to 7 bunk beds lining the walls. The inmates were forbidden from sitting or lying down during the day: they had to stay on their feet all the time. Since there was little room, the prisoners had to take turns to walk around. The Russians claimed this prevents leg muscle atrophy. The cell also had a large window painted over from the outside: after a few downpours the paint began to flake off and the inmates could see the light through the cracks.
The drinking water was scarce: the tap water had a strong stink to it. The inmates would have no needles or thread to patch up the clothes they had been given at the beginning of their imprisonment, either: they used splinters for needles and pulled threads out of their bed covers.
The time would be told by the sun and the cell checks, which would happen twice a day, at 8:30 and 20:00. The Russians would do thorough “cleanliness checks” by making the prisoners crawl under the beds on their stomachs or backs. If there was any dust on their body afterwards, they would have to clean the cell again after an obligatory workout: a few hundred squats or push-ups. Whenever the prisoners were taken into the hallway for a check, those who stood with their legs not wide enough apart could get beaten on them.
The lights were exhausting: they never went out. In building No. 1 they were bright enough to interfere with the prisoners’ sleep. The inmates tried to cover them up with towels wherever they could. If that was not an option, they wrapped their heads in the towels. Whenever the guards noticed this, the prisoners were beaten or made to squat: 50 to 500 times. The guards called this “leveling up.”
Russian propaganda was blasted from the speakers throughout the day. Vlad still remembers one of the voices: that of Patrick Lancaster, an American blogger who traveled to Donetsk to “help the locals.” The audio was about Russian troops arriving to “save” Ukraine’s civilians. Some of the stories were old: for instance, one claimed that the US Embassy was “hauling money” to the Maidan during the Revolution of Dignity. There were reports of “triumphs” such as the “referenda” in the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts or the Illich plant in Mariupol resuming operations.
The prisoners were also forced to sing Russian songs: Den Pobedy, Katyusha, Viktor Tsoi. Vlad says the guards would pick the songs like karaoke. If the inmates did not know the songs, they had to sing whatever they knew.
Inspections and hiding civilians
In 2024, the National Guard troops taken prisoner in the Chornobyl zone were moved out of Pakino. They were very thin. That was when frequent inspections of the colony began, with majors, colonels, generals coming to visit. The treatment of prisoners was now so different that they were handed out hygiene necessities and their diet was changed.
For instance, inmates were no longer fed rotten vegetables. They started seeing carrots, onions, beets, and cucumbers in their meals. The servicemen were now given sardines and sprat in tomato sauce. Every now and then they would be served mackerel or hake, one fish per person. Sometimes it was undercooked and stinky. They were also given a loaf of bread each. The prisoners started to gain weight; Vlad now weighed 63 kilograms.
Vlad says that besides inspections by generals, they were even visited by the Red Cross. However, there were Ukrainian civilians imprisoned in the colony as well, and those were hidden away during most inspections: all civilians would be taken to building No. 2, which stood empty ever since all inmates were moved elsewhere in the summer of 2023. If a Red Cross delegation reached those cells, the civilian hostages were to tell them they were POWs. It is unclear how many of such hostages there were; Vlad knows of at least five people from Zaporizhzhia oblast. They were treated the same as the prisoners of war. The guards could not believe that Ukrainian civilians would end up in a Russian prison for no reason. “That can’t be, you must have done something,” they would say.
The Red Cross would hand out humanitarian aid, but the Russians would take all of it for themselves. The only aid that would reach the prisoners were the toothbrushes and toothpastes handed out to them before a visit by the Russian Human Rights Commissioner, Tatyana Moskalkova.
This continued for nearly a year: by January 2025, the inspections ended, and the situation was back to what it used to be. The meals became worse again, the beating of prisoners resumed. A guard called Andrei, likely a junior officer, was the most enthusiastic. He would arrive in the colony every now and then as the staff rotated: the guards swapped places between the 5th and 10th day of every month, and building supervisors, shift supervisors, and FPS units did the same between the 10th and 25th day. Andrei would come as part of a shift. He could attack prisoners anywhere: in a hallway, a changing room, a cell. Inmates tried to complain to his superiors, but to no avail.
On top of it all, the prisoners were hit with an epidemic of demodicosis: a disease caused by skin mites. Symptoms include itching and rash on the body. Vlad says that the prison management did little to nothing to address the problem. Inmates turning to the infirmary for help would not always get it: for instance, the pustules were sometimes treated with zelyonka (brilliant green solution used as antiseptic). Sometimes they were given a special ointment or pills. However, if a prisoner was seen still scratching the rash afterwards, the treatment would stop. Every now and then the guards would take inmates outside naked to “sunbathe,” which was supposed to “help” with the disease. They had to put their own underwear on their heads to “prevent sunstroke.”
There was a major called Marchenko in the infirmary. When prisoners tried to get help from him, he would say, “You know the Lord’s Prayer? Keep saying it, it’ll help.”
Dmytro Khyliuk
Vlad needed photos to recognize Dmytro Khyliuk, even though he said that the journalist he had shared a cell with worked on television. Still, the marine recognized Dmytro in several pictures and confirmed that he had been the one sharing the cell with him, despite him looking half the weight at the time. Vlad never spoke to Khyliuk personally and knows the details of his story by word of mouth from other prisoners.
Vlad ended up in a cell with the UNIAN journalist in August 2023. That was when the prison staff decided to move the inmates out of building No. 2. Shortly before that, Andrei had cruelly beaten several of them and made them crawl on the floor afterwards.
The beatings were so severe that the floor was splattered with blood. Andrei explained that he beat the POWs because a prisoner swap had been cancelled… due to the earthquake in Türkiye. Vlad was moved to building No. 3 for a day after that.
As opposed to buildings No. 1 and No. 2, this one was a high security sector: the lights were dim, the cell windows were smaller and high up near the ceiling, with bars installed in the window frames. The floor of cell No. 8, where Vlad was taken, was brown in colour. There was a table in the center with a compartment for dishes. Five bunk beds lined the walls. There were six people inside, taking turns walking around and sitting: since there was little room, they had to walk in circles, in figure-8 patterns, cross the cell on the diagonal.
Dmytro Khyliuk was one of the inmates. Vlad did not talk to him. You never know who might be next to you in a prison and if they might report your conversation to the officers. And this was a new cell. Vlad only knew that Dmytro was a prominent journalist in Ukraine. The guards let it slide once that they were aware of that, too, and that Ukraine was very eager to free him. Other inmates described Dmytro favourably as a “stern” person.
On that day Dmytro took turns walking and sitting down in the cell like the rest. He was mostly silent. There were no beating marks on him—at least Vlad did not see any. However, the journalist’s entire body was covered in demodicosis rash, as was the case with other prisoners. He looked like he weighed about 45–50 kilograms, very thin: his features were sharper compared to the photos.
Vlad was moved to building No. 1 (medium security) the following day. In late 2024, a POW joined them who said that Dmytro was protesting in his cell: he refused to come out for checks or get out of bed and was protesting the mistreatment of vulnerable people in prisons in general.
Sadly, Vlad does not remember the exact date when this happened and was overall very cautious in telling this story, as he was recounting what he had heard from someone else and was afraid of being inaccurate. He knows that Dmytro was summoned by the chief operative, they talked, and for some time no one bothered Dmytro. Vlad does not know what came after this.
Vlad saw Dmytro again a few weeks before being swapped in May 2025. The prisoners were taken to the infirmary for demodicosis treatment: they were handed out an ointment for the rash. Vlad saw Dmytro pass by his camera towards the infirmary. The journalist received his tube of medicine and was led back to his cell. He had gained a little weight compared to 2023, his face no longer looked gaunt, but overall he still looked underweight. This was probably due to the prisoners’ diet having improved.
Three weeks later, in early summer of 2025, Vlad was swapped. Dmytro likely remains imprisoned in Pakino.
Stas Kozliuk for the Institute of Mass Information, translation by Maria Ihnatieva
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