Within night‑marrow prisons run by Russian‑backed separatists, 64‑year‑old Liudmyla Huseinova was seized from her home in early October 2019. Her claim, verified by BBC investigators, recounts a flight to the secretive Izolyatsia detention centre, where she endured beatings, electric shocks, mock executions and the sexual assault of an officer named Yurii Temerbek.
Temerbek, a former Ukrainian traffic policeman, is now free in the Rostov region of Russia, while Yeriomichev – a barred baritone who once wore a traffic police uniform – is likewise living openly in occupied Crimea. Both men, according to Ukrainian authorities, are accused of collaborating with the Donetsk People’s Republic’s Ministry of State Security, and prosecutors have charged them as part of a “terrorist group” for their wartime conduct.
The BBC’s cross‑research, working with Ukrainian open‑source investigators, uncovered 93 hidden sites in occupied Ukraine and an additional 102 in Russia where civilians and POWs were detained between 2023 and 2025. Of these, a third were unofficial – from a tax office to a hotel – and the rest remain closed to international observers.
More than 2,000 detainees have passed through such centres since the Russian full‑scale invasion in 2022, with 85 men charged for conflict‑related sexual violence and 30 convicted, most in absentia. One of the men, Oleksii Sivak, a 42‑year‑old sailor, reported electric‑current torture used on his genitals while held in a former police facility in Kherson.
Liudmyla now lives with her husband in Kyiv and runs an organisation to support other detained women, while also using a covert network to send parcels to those still imprisoned. The BBC recorded that only one former head of Izolyatsia has been arrested and sentenced to 15 years in Kyiv; the facility itself continues to operate in occupied territory.
Despite attempts to contact Temerbek, Yeriomichev and Spivak, the men have not responded. The Russian Embassy in the UK dismissed the allegations but did not deny them, noting that investigations are ongoing.
