Filter and rule: Inside Russia’s system of abductions and torture in the occupied territories of Ukraine

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In January 2025, staff members of Russia’s Memorial Human Rights Defense Center visited Ukraine for the first time since Russia’s full-scale invasion began. The team traveled through the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Mykolaiv, and Kherson regions, interviewing residents who had lived under occupation or captivity and documenting the aftermath of Russian shelling. Based on the trip, Memorial produced a report that examines Russia’s pre-planned policy of state terror, one involving indiscriminate attacks on populated areas, the mistreatment of prisoners of war, and the “filtration” of civilians living in occupied areas.

From the NKVD to Chechnya: How “filtration” was conceived

During and after World War II, millions of people passed through Soviet filtration camps: foreigners living in areas that came under Moscow’s control, but also Soviet civilians on territory liberated from Nazi occupation and Red Army soldiers returning from captivity. Roughly one in six was subjected to further repression, and even those who were later released lost many of their civil rights.Many known Soviet opposition figures and members of the political elites of freshly occupied countries were labeled in advance as “fascists” and “Nazis” in the files of Stalin’s secret police.

The system of filtration, sweeps, and secret prisons was also widely used during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. It was there that torture became normalized among officers in the armed forces, internal troops, the Interior Ministry, and the Main Directorate of Corrective Labor Institutions (now the Federal Penitentiary Service, FSIN). Soviet veterans of the Afghan war who later rose to senior posts in Russia’s security apparatus did not seek to prosecute subordinates who continued to use such methods.

Filtration in modern Russia became truly large-scale during the First and Second Chechen wars. Russian forces did not have reliable information about the militants and their accomplices, so they suspected nearly everyone. When Russian troops took control of a given town or village, local men and teenage boys were taken to filtration points — either permanent sites or specially organized temporary ones. There, they were interrogated while being beaten and tortured. Most were eventually released, though many were taken to improvised prisons at military bases. Later, those abducted could be “legalized” via the filing of fabricated formal charges. Some were exchanged, while others would simply “disappear.”

Confessions were extracted from detainees through torture, forcing them to admit to involvement in fighting and to provide information about militants. The accuracy of the information did not matter — the goal was to get testimony against one of the victim’s neighbors and then use it to compel the informant’s cooperation. A person who had been named could then be abducted or killed, after which the “agent,” under threat of being exposed, had no choice but to keep working with the security services. This is how Russia built an informant network in Chechnya.

It is not known exactly how many people went through filtration during the two Chechen wars, but the number is in the hundreds of thousands. Of those, an estimated 5,000 to 7,000 “disappeared” — that is, were killed. The Chechnya filtration model was later put to use during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Specific features of filtration in Ukraine

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Russian NGO “Memorial” spoke with residents of five Ukrainian regions occupied by Russia in the early stages of the invasion: Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Kherson. The human rights organization acknowledged that what it was able to document was “not even the tip of the iceberg, but the tip of the tip,” given how many people were affected by the war. Even so, based on the limited data it was able to collect, Memorial reached the following conclusion:

“Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities, drawing on previous experience, developed a system for filtering the civilian population in occupied territories, took a number of necessary preparatory steps in advance, and then deployed it from the very first days of the war.”

Literally from the first days of occupation, Russian forces set up numerous places of detention, both “legal” (such as those in former police stations, temporary detention centers, and pretrial detention facilities) and “illegal” (in the basements of business and cultural centers, and even at grain elevators and sawmills).

Relatives did not know where their loved ones were being held, let alone the reasons for their detention. During this time, the captives were interrogated — in almost every case with the use of violence and torture.

Some detainees were ultimately released. Others were executed without trial. A third group died under torture, and their bodies, showing signs of violent death, were found only after the territories were liberated.

Detainees who drew the particular attention of Russian security services were taken to Russia or to facilities in annexed Crimea, where criminal cases were opened against them. Some disappeared without a trace, and in many instances, it is still unknown whether a given person is being held incommunicado or was killed by Russian security forces.

The main difference between the filtration system Russia used in Ukraine and the one used in the two Chechen wars is that it became selective. Russian security forces were primarily interested in specific categories of people — active and former service members (especially veterans of the eight-year-long war in Donbas), members of territorial defense units, representatives of local authorities, employees of security and law enforcement agencies, and political and civil activists with pro-Ukrainian views.

Information could come from agent networks, from tips provided by local residents who were willing to cooperate with the occupiers, and from open sources. Bureaucratic records seized from occupied government buildings — military recruitment offices, local registry offices,, and other institutions — provided the occupies with further data on the biographical details of countless locals, and once targeted individuals were taken into custody, information about their acquaintances could be obtained through torture and threats.

Finally, many Ukrainians were detained after simply being stopped on the street for inspection. If Russian forces found something they considered compromising on the passerby’s phone or among their belongings, they could simply be taken away.

Russian practices suggest a high level of advance preparation and a systematic approach to filtration. First, such a system required creating an agent network on the ground, gathering information, and then passing that information to operatives in specific units and regions. Second, it required immediate analysis of captured documents for the names of local residents who fell into categories of interest to the occupying authorities. Third, it required setting up checkpoints in occupied areas to screen local civilians and process the resulting information on site.

How it worked

In March 2022, Russian troops entered Bucha. According to city council employee Dmytro Hapchenko, who spoke to Memorial, in the first days soldiers came to search the home of his neighbor, who had already managed to evacuate. It later turned out the neighbor was a firearms instructor for the Alfa special forces unit. Notably, Hapchenko said he himself did not know this — but the Russians did.

Hapchenko himself was detained near the city council building while he was helping distribute humanitarian aid. Russian troops decided that he, along with other city officials and volunteers, were members of the Ukrainian territorial defense. The Russians grabbed them and took them to their position. The captives were kept in a courtyard all day with their hands tied and were given neither food nor water.

The soldiers discussed what to do with the detainees. One guard said they would be handed over to the FSB for questioning and then taken to the forest and shot. But the soldiers received no orders regarding Hapchenko and his colleagues that day. At night, the captives were moved to a basement. When the soldiers guarding them left, the detainees managed to get out. Fearing he would be captured again, Hapchenko did not return to his home until the occupation ended.

Dmytro Hapchenko was saved by the confusion that reigned during the first days of the invasion. But not everyone in Bucha was so fortunate. Eight members of Ukraine’s territorial defense, along with the owner of the house where they were hiding, were detained and taken to a building on Yablunska Street that served as a Russian headquarters and filtration point. There, they were beaten and tortured for several hours before being executed. Only one fighter, Ivan Skyba, survived: he was shot in the abdomen, pretended to be dead, and escaped after nightfall.

A similar scene unfolded in the Chernihiv Region. In March 2022, in the village of Dolzhyk, a Ukrainian drone attacked a Russian military convoy. The soldiers surrounded the village and began searching among the residents for the alleged drone operator. They detained a boy around 15 or 16 years old who, frightened by the threat of torture, pointed to the house of the Kulichenko brothers. One of them, Yevhen, had previously served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fought in the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the Donbas. The Russians captured all three brothers and took them to a filtration site in the village of Vyshneve, about 40 kilometers away. They were held in a basement at a sawmill. About 50 others — both soldiers and civilians — were imprisoned there as well. The brothers were tortured for two days.

According to the abducted men’s father, one especially brutal soldier — “a Kadyrovite nicknamed Chikatilo” — shoved his gun barrel into prisoners’ mouths and told them, “I’ll shoot you now; you’ll be my eighty-eighth.”

Two days later, the brothers were driven into a forest and executed over a pre-dug grave. One of them, Mykola, was lucky — he was only wounded. He managed to climb out of the pit and made it back to the village alive.

Witnesses from the village of Novopetrivka in the Mykolaiv Region described similar stories. In the first days after the occupation, groups of Russian National Guard (Rosgvardiya) officers went door to door following prepared lists that bore the names of former servicemembers, ATO veterans, and hunters. Some were taken to a filtration site in the village of Chornobaivka in Kherson region, where they were tortured in order to extract information about other locals who might be inclined to resist Russian rule. After several days, all detainees were released except one — Andriy Oliinyk, whose fate remains unknown.

After the Rosgvardiya units left, regular Russian troops were stationed in Novopetrivka, where they continued abducting local residents. Prisoners were kept in specially dug pits — so-called zindans, also widely used during the wars in Chechnya — where they were tortured and interrogated about hidden weapons or alleged assistance to the Ukrainian army. One man was kidnapped after soldiers learned he had attended a military training course and held the rank of lieutenant. Most of those captured were later released, but after the village’s liberation, the bodies of three residents were found showing signs of torture.

Kherson: The “new normal”

After taking Kherson without a fight on March 4, 2022, Russian authorities at first tried to create an illusion of peaceful life in the city. Yet from the very first days of the occupation, filtration points began operating — in the building of the regional administration, in the former detention center of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, at the regional Interior Ministry headquarters, and in the basement of an office building. Human Rights Watch documented at least 20 locations in Kherson and its suburbs where occupiers held civilians.

“Memorial” interviewed 10 Kherson residents who went through filtration. One of them, Ivan (name changed by The Insider), had moved to Kherson from Crimea in 2014 and worked at a car service station. After the occupation began in March 2022, he became a volunteer, delivering humanitarian aid to residents.

In mid-July 2022, Ivan was detained by Rosgvardiya officers because of a chat in his phone with a friend who was serving in the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He was taken to a headquarters located on the grounds of an industrial facility. For more than an hour, about 10 people beat him with their fists, feet, and clubs. They also tortured him with electric shocks.

Ivan then spent four days in a temporary detention center. He was interrogated but not tortured further before being released on the condition of his unofficial cooperation with the FSB. They even offered him the chance to continue distributing humanitarian aid — provided that he did so on behalf of the ruling United Russia party.

On the evening of Sept. 29, Ivan and two female volunteers were detained while they were packing food for another delivery. During interrogation, it turned out they had been reported by an elderly local woman they had previously helped. She told the occupation authorities the volunteers supported Ukraine.

Notably, during the second detention, the officers were masked and immediately placed bags over the detainees’ heads — a detail characteristic of the filtration system first organized during the Chechen wars. Almost all those interviewed, including Dmytro Hapchenko from Bucha, told Memorial that Russian troops took extensive precautions to avoid being identified. During arrests, they covered their own faces and placed hats or plastic bags over their victims’ heads, sealing them with tape.

If that was not possible, captives were forced to face the floor or the wall. Interrogators wore masks, and when entering cells, they first ordered all detainees to cover their eyes with bags or hats thrown into the room beforehand. They avoided using names, referring to each other only by call signs. The goal of these measures, according to human rights defenders, was to make it as difficult as possible to identify the occupiers and thus prevent future accountability.

Ivan and one of the volunteers were held in prison for two weeks. The second woman was released only shortly before Kherson was liberated on Nov. 11. The captives were kept in adjacent cells and could hear each other’s screams from the nearby room where torture sessions were conducted. For four days, Ivan was taken to interrogations in which he was not questioned — only beaten and shocked with electricity by wires attached to his body and powered by a field telephone.

At one interrogation, an “FSB curator” was present. Local security officers told the superior they had searched Ivan’s home and found his diary. As Ivan explained to Memorial:

“In it, I once wrote that ‘our guys worked over Kherson; the night was restless but good — many Russians were killed.’ They showed him the diary. He looked at me, laughed, and said, ‘Well, you’re immortal.’”

Ivan was not handed over to the FSB officer, and the torture stopped. On Oct. 12, he was released on the condition that he continue “cooperating.” The curator contacted him twice, asking for information about specific people, but Ivan said he deliberately delayed responding and managed to hold out until Kherson was freed.

Over the course of the nine-month occupation, residents of Kherson were abducted under a wide range of pretexts. A person could attract attention if they were a pro-Ukrainian activist or volunteer, or they could be denounced by pro-Russian locals as the result of private conversations — as happened to Ivan. Others were falsely accused by random people who were trying to save themselves: one victim interviewed by Memorial said a drunk neighbor, detained by a Russian patrol after curfew, had named him simply in order to avoid trouble. Some were arrested because of their professions — a forest ranger who legally owned a gun confessed under torture to belonging to a sabotage group allegedly led by his superior, the deputy director of a biosphere reserve.

Conditions for release also varied. Most detainees were simply freed when Russian forces decided they were of no interest, but many who may never have seen freedom again managed to get out thanks to the liberation of Kherson. Oleksandr Dyakov, who had secretly helped the Ukrainian armed forces, was freed by accident amid the occupiers’ haste to retreat across the Dnieper River. Torture had caused tissue necrosis in Dyakov’s leg, and he was hospitalized and underwent surgery. He said doctors delayed his discharge, and in late October 2022, where orders were issued to prepare Kherson hospitals for evacuation and to release all ambulatory patients, Dyakov’s name somehow made it onto the list. In the rush of the occupiers’ withdrawal, the order was overlooked, and Dyakov was able to hide until the city was liberated.

Two Kherson residents interviewed by Memorial, Nikolai Megerya and Sergey Lobachuk, were released at around the same time . They and more than 20 other detainees were taken beyond the front line, handed placards reading “Kherson is Russia,” then forced to say on camera that they “had no complaints” and that “no torture, physical, or psychological abuse was used against them.” The prison guards then staged a mock execution and abandoned them on the spot.

Why is filtration needed?

Despite the limited sample of data — and despite the many instances in which Russian service members carried out crimes on their own initiative rather than by direct order — human rights monitors concluded that the evidence from the occupied territories shows the outlines of a large-scale, organized system of state terror. But what are the system’s objectives?

Its primary goal is to neutralize real or potential participants of any resistance movement. As noted, filtration targets include former military personnel, ATO veterans, and security-service employees — people who know how to handle weapons. Occupiers were also interested in local officials who command respect in their communities and who have administrative experience.

Another vulnerable group was volunteers and pro-Ukrainian activists, those willing and able to take on complex tasks while helping to organize others to participate. Volunteers and civilian activists played a major role in resisting hybrid Russian aggression following Russia’s illegal annexation and invasion of the Donbas in 2014. At risk as well were hunters, foresters, and gamekeepers — people who legally possess weapons, know how to use them, and are accustomed to independent thinking and decision-making.

A further aim is to invoke psychological terror, intimidate, and serve as a show of force. The filtration system was meant to create the impression that any sign of independence, noncompliance with the occupation administration, or sympathy for Ukraine will be reported to security services, who will enact punishment. Anyone could be detained at any time for any reason, and relatives would not be told where their loved one was being held. The occupiers could thus do with them as they pleased: torture them, transport them to Russia, fabricate criminal charges, or simply kill them. In such a system local residents are meant to accept their fate, eliminating the possibility of effective resistance.

Another purpose of the filtration apparatus is to build an informant network, as in the case of Ivan. He was not the only recruit. Breaking victims of the filtration system allowed the occupiers to create a network of informants within pro-Ukrainian circles — by definition, those considered disloyal. And even if the vast majority of recruited agents have refused to cooperate after liberation, all of them needed to be screened for potential ongoing collaboration with the FSB — a task that demanded significant resources from the Ukrainian security services and fueled mutual distrust within pro-Ukrainian communities even after the Russians were gone.