![]() Russia’s targeting of local leaders like Dibrovskyi and Kuprash is not new. His captors had tried to trick him into being a Russian spy. ![]() “I realized only later what I had signed.” I was told to write down what they say,” Dibrovskyi said. “After torture, I was given paper and a pen. ![]() Every morning, they had to belt out the Russian national anthem. He got a wound on his forehead from kneeling and pressing his head to the cold, humid ground. A man boxed Dibrovskyi’s ears so hard he fainted. Some men were unable to sit after the beatings, and others got broken ribs. I was naked, beaten from left, right side, on back and my ears, legs - constant beatings,” he said. They were videotaped, searched for tattoos, and stripped. When they arrived at Pre-Trial Detention Center Number One, in Kursk, Russia, Dibrovskyi and the others squatted down and folded their hands behind their heads. In the morning, they boarded an airplane. On April 14, he was herded on a Russian KAMAZ truck with 90 other people who had failed filtration. As he hunched over in his underwear, they ordered him to dig himself a grave in the frozen earth. The commander pointed at another man being beaten near a tree, who he said had fingered Kuprash as the head of the local Territorial Defense, a volunteer military group. When they got to the forest cemetery, dozens of Russian soldiers forced Kuprash to strip and shoved him around in a circle, jeering and insulting him, he said. Kuprash kept insisting he was a civilian. Under the laws of war, Russians could detain spotters like Kuprash in humane conditions, but never disappear or torture them, human rights lawyers say. They accused him of sending Russian troop positions to Ukrainian authorities, which Kuprash told AP he had been doing. One of the Russians pulled out a long knife and held it against Kuprash’s throat. The soldiers hit Kuprash in the head with a rifle, threw him in the back of the car and drove towards a cemetery in the forest. The pattern was similar across the country, according to testimonies AP collected from occupied and formerly occupied territories around Kyiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Chernihiv and Donetsk regions. In three other cases, Russians seized family members, including a child, to exert pressure. In three cases, Russians tortured people into informing on others. Some victims were held at detention sites, where they were interrogated, beaten and subjected to electric shocks, survivors said. The AP documented a sample of 61 cases across Ukraine, drawing on Russian lists of names obtained by Ukrainian authorities, photographic evidence of abuse, Russian media accounts and interviews with dozens of victims, family and friends, and Ukrainian officials and activists. In the crosshairs were government officials, journalists, activists, veterans, religious leaders and lawyers. Russian troops hunted Ukrainians by name, using lists prepared with the help of their intelligence services. The strategy appears to violate the laws of war and could help build a case for genocide. In a deliberate, widespread campaign, Russian forces systematically targeted influential Ukrainians, nationally and locally, to neutralize resistance through detention, torture and executions, an Associated Press investigation has found. Word went round in circles of influential Ukrainians: Don’t sleep in your own home. Kuprash - and others The Associated Press spoke with - had been quietly warned that they were targets for advancing Russian forces. ![]() “It’s better to cooperate with us.’” Kuprash grabbed some camping kit and his warmest coat and headed for his hole in the woods. “We will find you anyway,” the man responded. “No, you’ve got the wrong number,” Kuprash lied. A man speaking Russian asked if he was the village head. He covered it with branches and went back home.Ī week later, Kuprash got a call around 8 a.m. It was his just-in-case, a place to lie low if he needed. He didn’t stop until he had carved out a shallow pit, big enough for a man like him. ![]() KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Three days after the first Russian bombs struck Ukraine, Andrii Kuprash, the head of a village north of Kyiv, walked into a forest near his home and began to dig. ![]()
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