Journalists identify Belarusian location where Russians tortured Ukrainian POWs – video, photos

Russian forces tortured Ukrainian prisoners of war at the state utility Prypiat Alliance in the town of Naroulia, Homiel Oblast, Belarus, in 2022.

Source: joint investigation by Schemes, an investigative journalism project of Radio.Liberty, and the Belarusian Investigative Center, supported by The Reckoning Project on documenting war crimes and the hacker group Cyber Partisans, as shared by investigative journalist Kyrylo Ovsianyi on Facebook

Details: The investigation reveals that Prypiat Alliance is a state-owned company under the government of Alexander Lukashenko. The land plot in Naroulia, where Russians established a military base and tortured Ukrainian POWs in 2022, belongs to this company.

Returning POWs recalled only that they had been held in Belarus. None could precisely identify the location where they were beaten, tortured, humiliated and coerced into participating in propaganda videos during "filtering" procedures. Their only recollection was of a site resembling a collective farm.

Through OSINT analysis of Russian propaganda videos and satellite imagery, journalists pinpointed the exact location. They are now awaiting "an appropriate response from the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine".

Planet Labs satellite images indicate that Russian forces remained at this base at least until early May 2022.

The investigation also reveals unique footage obtained by Radio Liberty journalists – a video from the action camera of a Russian soldier found in Kyiv Oblast. The footage, taken on the morning of 24 February 2022, shows a convoy of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine from Belarus near the Chornobyl area.

Later, these soldiers, along with other prisoners, were featured in a propaganda segment on the Russian NTV TV channel, filmed at the Belarusian Prypiat Alliance site in Naroulia.

After the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian human rights defenders and journalists began receiving numerous reports about a filtration camp set up by the Russians in Naroulia. Ukrainian prisoners – both civilians and soldiers – were reportedly transported there. Some human rights advocates have described this camp as one of the most brutal in its treatment of detainees.

Human rights groups revealed that some Ukrainians who endured the filtration camp at the Prypiat Alliance site in Naroulia remain in captivity, held in Russian penal colonies.

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