Hello, my name is Yevheniia Motorevska, and I head the Kyiv Independent's War Crimes Investigations Unit. I am writing this newsletter on a rather extraordinary occasion — the subject of one of our investigations was blown up in Russian-occupied Donetsk. He died on the spot.

I'm talking about Serhii Yevsiukov, the former head of Russia's notorious Olenivka camp for prisoners of war. He was a former Ukrainian police officer who defected to Russia long ago, in 2014.

The Witness author
Olenivka prison is located in eastern Ukraine, not far from the occupied regional capital of Donetsk. In 2022, the prison was turned into a POW camp for Ukrainian soldiers captured during the battle for Mariupol.

This camp became notorious not only because of the torture that happened behind its walls. Ukrainians who returned from captivity testified to widespread torture, including sexual violence and inhumane treatment.

On July 29, 2022, part of the camp was blown up. At least 53 were killed, with the actual number of casualties may be higher because Russian troops concealed all information about the massacre.

In late 2023, our team released an investigative documentary about Olenivka. We were able to identify the prison guards who brutally tortured Ukrainian soldiers, as well as the senior officers at the camp. One of the key figures in our investigation was the head of the camp, Serhii Yevsiukov.

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The commander of the Azov Brigade, Denys Prokopenko, who led the defense of Mariupol in 2022 and also survived captivity, recalled that Yevsiukov hated Ukrainians. In particular, Prokopenko remembered Yevsiukov saying that "such a country as Ukraine doesn't exist."

Another former prisoner of Olenivka told us that one day, when a shell hit the compound, Yevsiukov immediately ran to check if the prison's vegetable garden was intact (POWs were forced to grow vegetables). Although the shell exploded near a barrack with female prisoners of war, the chief of the prison didn't care much about their fate.

What struck me most was that in 2022, neither the senior officers nor the prison guards covered their faces. They openly abused Ukrainian soldiers and were even proud of it. We found out that one of the Ukrainian soldiers was beaten to death with truncheons during the so-called prison admission process.

People were beaten and tortured for no reason. They did it just because they could. At that time, they were sure that they would never be punished. These were the first months of the full-scale invasion, and no one believed that Ukraine would survive, let alone successfully fight back.

A year later, when our team began its investigation, the prison administration and senior officers had already deleted their social media accounts. Some had even moved their families from the occupied territories to Russia — a smart move, as it turned out.

I spent almost a year investigating the crimes in Olenivka. I wanted to see Yevsiukov in court. But, I realized that given the scale of Russian atrocities, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people like him. And unfortunately, not all of them will be punished by law for the war crimes they have allegedly committed and continue to commit in Ukraine.

After the news of Yevsiukov's death in occupied Donetsk, I contacted several former prisoners of Olenivka. All of them said they felt a sense of relief that morning. For them, this news was justice. A victory over evil.