11 September 2026, 23:47
In Crimea, Russia has established a network of closed prisons for Ukrainians
Ця стаття також доступна українською
PHOTO: screenshot from a video
Journalists identified two employees of the security and supervision department at Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 in Simferopol, which was opened in occupied Crimea after the full-scale invasion had already begun. According to former inmates, these are the very people who directly tortured Ukrainian civilians.
This is detailed in The Kyiv Independent’s investigation, “How Russia Turned Occupied Crimea into a Giant Prison.”
A New System of Closed Prisons
After 2022, two new pretrial detention centers—Pretrial Detention Center No. 2 and Pretrial Detention Center No. 8—were opened on the occupied peninsula, where civilians detained in the seized territories of southern Ukraine began to be brought. Journalists found that both facilities are closely linked to the FSB, and as of March 2026, most such institutions in the Russian Federation officially came under the control of the security service.
Former detainees reported that at Pretrial Detention Center No. 2, they were constantly beaten, forbidden from communicating with one another, forced to learn the Russian national anthem, denied medical care, and forced to stand for hours in painful positions.
Who the Journalists Identified
According to eyewitnesses, one of the most brutal guards was Zhanat Akhmetov —at the time of the investigation, the deputy head of the security department at Detention Center No. 2. A Russian native of Omsk, according to leaked database records, he previously worked at Simferopol’s First Pretrial Detention Center and holds the status of a combat veteran.
The security department was also headed by Leonid Kovakh —a Ukrainian who remained working in Crimea after the occupation. According to former detainees, the torture took place under his supervision, and he personally participated in it.
The Role of the FSB and the “Special” Third Floor
Witnesses reported that part of the third floor of Detention Center No. 2 was subject to a special regime—people from the newly occupied territories were held there under heightened security, completely cut off from the outside world. Such detainees were called “the nameless ones”—no official charges were brought against them, and their relatives had no information about their fate for months.
Journalists also discovered that Anton Panin had become the head of the classified Pretrial Detention Center No. 8, which has officially been under the jurisdiction of the FSB since 2022 — a former FSB investigator who previously handled the cases of Crimean Tatar politician Nariman Dzhelial and the Akhtemov brothers.
According to estimates by the Ukrainian Ombudsman, Russia is illegally detaining approximately 16,000 Ukrainian civilians in about 200 detention facilities in Russia and in the occupied territories.
