By: Derick Zhang

As most people know, Russia has invaded Ukraine, what you didn’t know is that they are abusing their prisoners. Russian forces have tortured civilians, not soldiers, civilians. Most people are outraged about the cities being destroyed, but the report by Human Rights Watch, a New York-based nonprofit, put the struggles of prisoners into the spotlight.

Most people knew this invasion was coming when the Russian forces moved from a Northern region called Crimea into the south along the Black Sea and Sea of Azov including the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Provinces. They have turned that part of the country into chaos and made it into a big torture dungeon.

What the Russians have done to the civilians, were suddenly in a prison, beaten and then put you into a jail. The Russians say they are just trying to ‘get rid of Ukrainian Nazis and we’re the good guys.’ To find out what they were actually doing because clearly, they weren’t trying to flush out Nazi’s. The Human Rights Watch said it spoke with 71 people, out of the 71 people more than half said that they were isolated from any other human beings or people just simply disappeared after they were detained. The people interviewed described being tortured, or witnessing it, through consecutive beatings and even electric shocks. The damage of this was that most of these people had severe burns; cuts; concussions; broken teeth and bones including ribs; and broken blood vessels. On top of this three Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces who were being held as prisoners of war, two of which perished.

Luckily, after putting into the spotlight many countries took this into consideration and declared that these were car crimes for the abuses the Russian forces have applied, but this seems like only the beginning of the war. This war may last for a long time though and there may be thousands, even millions of Ukrainian citizens by then. Russia may not stop and this may the holocaust all over again.