I was held prisoner by Putin’s thugs – they beat & starved me as inmates screamed ‘please shoot me’ in hellhole jail | The Sun
A HERO soldier who was held prisoner and tortured by the Russians for four months has vowed to return to the frontline.
Svyatoslav Yermonov, 33, was left looking a shadow of his former self after losing nearly five stone will being held in captivity by Putin's monsters in a notorious prison camp.
The Ukrainian cop turned soldier was released from captivity in a prisoner exchange after he was captured in May from the fortress Azovstal steelworks in the decimated city of Mariupol.
Svyatoslav, a dad-of-one, was then shipped to the hellish Olenivka prison in the Russian occupied separatist region of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR).
It was a hellhole as he vividly remembered injured, emaciated men moaning: "Shoot me, just stop torturing me".
And twisted DPR officials even told his family that he was DEAD – leaving them stunned when he finally came home last month.
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Svyatoslav and his brave comrades were subjected to truly inhuman brutality at the hands of their deranged jailers – forced to drink filthy water and living on a diet of scalding hot gruel.
The soldiers were beaten as some 200 of them were crammed together in an overcrowded cell block.
They ended up riddled with lice in the inhumane conditions and were so tightly packed together you could fell other men's jagged bones poking through their skin.
Svyatoslav is now undergoing rehabilitation in a Kyiv hospital – and he has vowed to return to the battlefield when he is discharged.
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He had weighed a healthy 13st 3lb before his stint in the prison camp – and left weighing 8st 6lbs.
The trooper told how the prisoners were given a choice – simply starve or choke down boiling hot gruel that would scald their mouths.
The Ukrainians were given just one minute to guzzle down the scorching hot, inedible porridge as it burned their cheeks, throats and gums.
And if the prisoners kept eating after their one minute window, they were beaten and then forced to duck walk – an intense squatting exercise – 200 metres to the barracks.
"[The gruel] was intentionally served piping hot," Svyatoslav told the Sun Online.
"You were given just one minute to eat it. It was a very deliberate choice between burning your mouth and throat or starving."
He added: "If you kept eating after the minute ran out, you were beaten and forced to duck-walk 200 metres to the barracks.
Some of them begged: ‘Shoot me. Just stop torturing me'.
“There was simply no time to eat whatever meagre amount of food we were given."
Forced to guzzle down disgusting water to cool their burned mouths, the men were left suffering diarrhea and stomach cramps.
Describing conditions, he said: “The only hygiene product we had was household soap.
"A single piece for several people. Of course, it was never enough. Some prisoners got lice.
“In the beginning, we would sleep next to each other right on the bare concrete floor. Later, we were lucky to get beds.”
The Olenivka prison camp was hit by a missile in late July that killed at least 50 Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Ukraine accused Russia of staging the blast to “cover up the torture and execution of prisoners” at the facility. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it a “deliberate Russian war crime.”
Svyatoslav recalled:"We all clearly heard that' a shell was fired from somewhere close. An explosion immediately followed and then a fire. None of us had any doubts that this was the Russians deliberately executing our brothers."
Svyatoslav said he had lost all hope of being released and had been preparing for a freezing winter.
But he was among 215 prisoners released on September 21 in swaps agreed between the two countries – with those freed including five Brits.
He said: “One morning I was taken out of the barracks and had my hands tied very tightly and my eyes taped shut.
“Then they threw me into a truck. About 40 more prisoners were also thrown into it, in a pile. We were laying on top of each other, feeling our neighbours’ bones digging into our emaciated bodies.
“I ended up at the bottom, screaming out of pain and suffocation. For that I was beaten with a club on the head.
“We then drove for eight hours to an unknown destination. People were moaning with pain. Some of them begged: ‘Shoot me. Just stop torturing me.’
“A plane flew us to Moscow, then to Rostov. Only when we were in Belarus did we realise that we were brought for a prisoner swap.
“Frankly, it is hard to put into words the feelings that overwhelmed me when I saw the Ukrainian flag.
"Volunteers immediately rushed to feed us."
Ukraine is currently pushing the Russians back on the frontline, even as Putin attempts to terrorise civilians with attacks on infrastructure in cities such as Kyiv.
Vlad has expected he could steamroller Ukraine – but instead has met a fierce and heroic resistance determined to send his troops back across the border to Russia.
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