The principal tasks here are surviving after the desire to live has forsaken you and nothing in the world depends on you any longer, preserving your sanity as you teeter on the brink of madness and remaining a human being in conditions so inhuman that faith, forgiveness, hate, and even a torturer locking eyes with his victim become laden with manifold meanings.
—Stanislav Aseyev, The Torture Camp on Paradise Street
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer and journalist. He has a degree in philosophy and a master’s degree in religious studies from the University of Donetsk. The author of a published collection of short stories and a novel, Elephant Melchior, he began reporting on what was happening in Donetsk between 2015 and 2017. His work was published under the pseudonym Stanislav Vasin in the Mirror Weekly newspaper and other Ukrainian media, for which he was arrested and held in a secret prison for more than two years. Aseyev was released in an exchange in December 2019. His dispatches from the Donetsk People’s Republic were collected and published under the title In Isolation: Dispatches from Occupied Donbas. He later authored a book recounting his experiences in the torture camp Izolyatsia, The Torture Camp on Paradise Street.
Since his release, Aseyev has been active in the struggle for the rights of prisoners held in illegal prisons in Russia and the occupied territories, and he has spoken at forums such as the Council of Europe and the Munich Security Conference. He also founded the Justice Initiative Fund to track down war criminals such as those who operated Izolyatsia and similar sites. In 2023, Aseyev enlisted in the Territorial Defence Forces of Ukraine as an infantryman. In late April of 2024, while serving with the 109th Separate Territorial Defence Brigade, Aseyev was concussed during the fighting in Donbas and sent to the rear to recover. It was during this period, before his return to the front, that we conducted this interview.
In 2014 when town was occupied by pro-Russian militiamen, why did you decide to stay?
In 2014, I stayed in Donbas mainly because of family circumstances. I was the only man in the family and I was responsible for my mother and my two grandmothers. If I had left, they would have been left alone in the war, so I couldn’t afford it.
In June 2017, you were arrested because you sent dispatches under a pseudonym about what was happening in the “Donetsk People’s Republic.” How would you describe what was happening there at that time? Was the influence of Russian propaganda on the population decisive?
Regarding what was happening there between 2014 and 2017, it was like a return to the Soviet Union with elements of what Orwell wrote in 1984, i.e., a massive bombardment of Russian propaganda meant to shape the population in the image of “homo sovieticus” presenting an epic image of the Soviet past as an aspirational model and systematically teaching the population to hate those on the other side of the barricades. Propaganda was present everywhere, starting with the large billboards and their particular decorative style, and ending even in the small local media.
You were accused of “espionage” and “extremism” and sent to a secret detention camp in Paradise Street, which is certainly Orwellian. You describe it as a torture camp.
The detention camp I was in is called Izolyatsia (Isolation), and it is still in operation.
Why is it called Isolation? Because during the Soviet Union it was a former factory of insulating materials. The factory ceased its activity in 1990, and since 2010 it has housed a platform for cultural initiatives, including an art foundation also called Isolation. In 2014, after the occupation of the facilities by pro-Russian militants, the foundation moved to Kyiv, and Isolation became a kind of concentration camp. The pro-Russians repurposed the cellars and offices into torture cells and rooms, where torture was usually carried out with electric current.
What was life like in the camp? Who ran it?
In Isolation I saw almost all kinds of war crimes: torture, humiliation of human dignity, and also the murder of prisoners, sexual violence, and forced labour.
It was a very harsh regime, which was established by the local administration of the DPR. The director was Denis Kulykovsky, nicknamed Palych*, and his subordinates in the administration of Isolation were mostly locals. Most of them had belonged to the Ukrainian criminal/police agencies, but there were also civilians. However, control of the camp was in the hands of the Fifth Department of the FSB, which today “officially” operates on that territory, as Russia considers it to be its own.
*Palych, who delighted in randomly torturing and assaulting inmates, was arrested in the Ukrainian capital on 9 November 2021 by the Ukrainian security service, SBU, with the help of Aseyev and journalist Christo Grozev. Palych has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for supervising and participating in illegal detentions and torture described in court by more than 20 victims, including Aseyev himself.
How do you endure torture for three years? Is it possible to maintain hope in such a place?
What helped me to endure was the support of my loved ones, because I knew that, even though I had almost no contact with them, my mother and my girlfriend were waiting for me. Also the hatred of the camp administration, because I wanted to take my revenge; and finally to survive, to get out of there and at least tell what had happened in this place. In the end, I succeeded and was able to write a book about it.
Tell me about your release and your return to Ukraine.
I spent 28 months in Isolation, after which I was transferred to an official prison, a facility in Donetsk that had been part of the Ukrainian penitentiary system. I spent 18 days there, after which I was sent to a camp for criminals, where there was even a separate barracks for prisoners of war and civilian hostages. The camp was in the town of Makiivka. There I spent half a month before the exchange at the end of December 2019.
We were not told anything about the exchange until the last moment, i.e., we found out about the exchange just on the morning of the exchange itself, but there were signs that something was being prepared. For example, on the day before, we were given Red Cross clothes, and it was clear that the people who received them would soon be exchanged. We were simply bussed to the checkpoints where the exchange actually took place. The Ukrainian side handed over to the Russians prisoners who had been detained under the articles of terrorism or collaborationism and, on the Russian side, Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages like me were returned to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
How many Ukrainians have found a similar destination since the Russian invasion?
If we talk specifically about the Isolation, several thousand people have passed through there since 2014, maybe two or two and a half thousand; there is no exact data, because it was not until 2017 that large exchanges took place. And there are also people who left there privately, individually.
If we talk about prisoners of war, from Azovstal alone we are talking about several thousand prisoners, especially from the Azov movement. About civilians, it is very difficult to say a number. It is possible that our authorities have some statistics, although most probably this information is classified and nobody says numbers for sure.
After all you have been through, you joined the army and are fighting the Russian invader at the front. Others who have gone through similar experiences have done the same. Where do you find the strength to continue?
For Ukrainians and the Ukrainian state in general, the question is whether we will continue to exist and survive, or whether we will simply disappear from the political map of the world; therefore, the question of where to draw strength does not arise as such. If we do not fight, our state will simply cease to exist and in its place, there will be places like Isolation or like other torture centres that we saw in the territory liberated from occupation, in the Kyiv region, in the Kharkiv region, and in the Kherson region. Wherever the Russians have been, there has been torture. We understand that, even if we surrender now and say that we end the war, and even if they take from us the territories they want, they will still simply kill all of us or put us in Russian camps like “Isolation.”
That is why the fight against Russia is for us an existential question; because, as Vladimir Putin said, the territory of the former Soviet Union is historical Russia (for them). That is the answer to what is happening. He doesn’t need the Donetsk region; he doesn’t need Luhansk or the Kherson region. He wants to reunite the Soviet Union, and Ukraine is the first thing that prevents him from going down that road, at least the first thing that poses serious resistance. I think that, in the West, they don’t understand this; they don’t hear these words of Putin, and they still think that he only needs some regions of Ukraine. No, he needs the territories of the former Soviet Union. And if Ukraine falls, then Moldova or the Baltic states will follow.
