The Screams Of Ukrainians Being Electrocuted And Maimed By Russian Soldiers Echoed Throughout The Prison

The screams of Ukrainians being electrocuted and maimed by Russian soldiers echoed throughout the prison. 
Those agonised cries remain at the forefront of Valerii's mind as he walks towards the prison cell where he was tortured and beaten by the soldiers. 
It was here, at the now derelict prison in the newly liberated city of Kherson, that the Russian soldiers would rape Ukrainian girls and beat men to death.
More than 180 prisoners were tightly packed into 20 cells on the second floor of prison. On the cell walls, the Russian soldiers had scrawled in graffiti: ', we are coming'.
From there, the Russian soldiers would lead them down to the first floor where they would endure hours of torture.

The prisoners would be electrocuted, waterbombed and maimed with knives.
Among them is Valerii, a local businessman who was tortured by Russian soldiers inside the prison in Kherson. He remembers the screams of his fellow inmates. 
Valerii, his voice cracking with emotion, told : 'They were tortured severely.

They were electrocuted. They were suffocating people in water. They cut people.
'They were doing things that I can't imagine how any human being could do. We were praying that Ukraine would return Kherson as soon as possible.' 
The screams of Ukrainians being electrocuted and maimed by Russian soldiers echoed throughout the prison. Those agonised cries remain at the forefront of Valerii's mind as he walks towards the prison cell where he was tortured and beaten by the soldiers.

Pictured: Valerii speaking of the torture endured by Ukrainians at the prison 
It was here, at the now derelict prison in the newly liberated city of Kherson, that the Russian soldiers would rape Ukrainian girls and beat men to death
More than 180 prisoners were tightly packed into 20 cells on the second floor of prison. On the cell walls, the Russian soldiers had scrawled in graffiti: 'Zelensky, we are coming'
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Valerii, now overcome with emotion and tears in his eyes, added: 'Please forgive me. This is hard for me. It's difficult, very difficult. Please forgive me.'
The Russian soldiers have now fled Kherson following a relentless Ukrainian offensive - but the horrific memories of months of murder, rape and abuse remain for the Ukrainians left behind. 
Local residents in Kherson have revealed that if they wore anything yellow and blue - the national colours of Ukraine - they could be shot dead or taken to a cellar where they would be tortured.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited the liberated city today, said soldiers there had found evidence of hundreds of new 'war crimes' carried out Russian troops.
'Bodies of dead civilians and servicemen have been found,' Zelensky said last night, adding that investigators had already documented more than 400 Russian war crimes in the area.
'The Russian army left behind the same savagery it did in other regions of the country it entered,' he said.
Some of those horrors were committed by Russian forces at the prison where Valerii was kept.

The businessman was arrested and imprisoned when he tried to stop Vladimir Putin's men from looting his office.
Andrei, who lives in an apartment next to the prison building, told Sky News that they heard the prisoners' screams.
'I heard everything, it was terrifying,' Andrei said.

'They were raping girls here. Then they brought men here and were beating them and killing them.'
Russian soldiers have used rape as a weapon of war in the eight months since the barbaric invasion began.
The true scale of wartime rape in Ukraine will continue to remain unknown as many women remain silent about their experiences for fear of being stigmatised.
Systematic mass rape campaigns use forced impregnation as a tool to ethnically cleanse a nation and psychologically traumatize generations of people.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited the liberated city today, said soldiers there had found evidence of hundreds of new 'war crimes' carried out Russian troops
This image shows a destroyed road bridge in the recently recaptured region of Kherson on Monday
 A building in Kherson is seen badly damaged on Sunday following Russia's retreat from the city
Other residents in an around Kherson since the city was liberated on Friday have described to Reuters killings and abductions under Russian occupation.
Russian soldiers 'would approach you in the street and ask if you were Ukrainian or Russian. If you said Ukrainian, they would take you away,' Natalia Papernaya, a 43-year-old clothing designer, said on Sunday.
The Russians, she said, had arrested her friend for photographing a neighbour's home to reassure the owners it had survived a nearby shell blast.

The troops had taped her friend's hood over her eyes, put her in a cellar for a day and demanded to know for whom she was taking pictures.
'They didn't touch her,' Papernaya said, but the friend heard the screams of other detainees and some who were forced to shout out praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin. 
'There were many people in there, women and men,' she said.
Yana Shaposhnikova, 36, another clothing designer, said a friend of hers had also been abducted and interrogated.

She herself had buried her yellow and blue Ukrainian flag.
'If you wore anything yellow and blue you could be shot or invited into a cellar where you would be tortured,' she said.
A volunteer she knew who was delivering humanitarian aid to outlying areas had been taken to an underground jail, deprived of sleep and interrogated for three days about whether she was reporting on Russian positions, Shaposhnikova said.
Residents have described other abductions and killings to Reuters, including one account of a neighbour shot dead and three of people carried off by troops in the village of Blahodatne north of Kherson. 
Russia denies its troops target civilians or have committed atrocities in occupied areas.

But mass burial sites have been found in other parts of Ukraine previously occupied by Russian troops, including some with civilian bodies showing signs of torture.
Zelensky becomes emotional as he watches a Ukrainian flag being raised once again in the city of Kherson on Monday
A Ukrainian soldier raises the national flag in the central square of Kherson today
Residents, draped in the Ukrainian flag, cried with happiness as they saw Zelensky during his visit to Kherson today
Meanwhile, Zelensky today called the Russian withdrawal from Kherson 'the beginning of the end of the war' as he met soldiers and locals in the newly liberated city.
A jubilant crowd cheered as an emotional Zelensky, who has remained in Ukraine throughout the war, watched the nation's flag being raised once again in Kherson.
People with flags draped around their shoulders cheered, cried and screamed out in gratitude as Zelensky walked by.
'It's amazing.

We've been waiting for him for nine months, thank you,' said one resident, Danila Yuhrenko.
Another resident, Serhii Yukhmchuk, 라카지노 47, said he and his wife spent the occupation mostly at home to avoid interactions with the Russians.
They and others in their community silently protested by refusing to use the ruble, Russia's currency, he said.
Zelensky said Ukraine's 'strong army' was persistently reclaiming territories taken by Russia while also acknowledging the difficulties and the heavy human toll.
The president was greeted to a hero's welcome on his visit today, with people cheering and waving flags as soon as they saw him. 
The leader addressed troops and residents in the city's central square and vowed: 'We are moving forward.

We are ready for peace, peace for our country.' 
And he became emotional as he watched the yellow and blue flag of Ukraine being raised once more in Kherson following months of Russian occupation.
Zelensky appeared to be fighting back tears as he sang the national anthem during the ceremony. 
The retaking of Kherson was one of Ukraine's biggest successes in the nearly nine months since Moscow's invasion. It served another stinging blow to the Kremlin and could become a springboard for further advances into occupied territory.
But large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine are still under Russian control, and the city of Kherson itself remains within reach of Moscow's shells and missiles.

Meanwhile, heavy fighting continued elsewhere in the country, with Ukraine reporting several civilian casualties.
Zelensky walked the streets of Kherson on Monday, awarding medals to soldiers and posing with them for selfies - and striking a defiant note.
'This is the beginning of the end of the war,' he said.

'We are step by step coming to all the temporarily occupied territories.'
Local residents waved to the Ukrainian president during his visit to the city 
Volodymyr Zelensky was greeted to a hero's welcome as he visited the newly liberated city of Kherson today, with a jubilant crowd cheering him
Surrounded by guards, Volodymyr Zelensky walks in the central square during his visit to Kherson on Monday
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky awards a Ukrainian serviceman with a military award in Kherson on Monday
But he also grimly acknowledged that the fighting thus far 'took the best heroes of our country.'
The end of Russia's occupation of the city - the only provincial capital its forces have seized since the February invasion - has sparked days of celebration. 
But with winter approaching, residents are living without heat, water and electricity and are short of food and medicine. 
A Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said that Ukraine has won 'an important victory' in recapturing the city of Kherson and other areas west of the Dnieper River, but 'it has by no means liberated the minimum territory essential to its future security and economic survival.'
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, during a visit to The Hague on Monday, warned that 'we should not make the mistake of underestimating Russia.'
'The Russian armed forces retain significant capability as well as a large number of troops, and Russia has demonstrated their willingness to bear significant losses,' Stoltenberg said.
Zelenskyy has previously appeared unexpectedly in other front-line areas at crucial junctures of the war and his latest visit was both laden with symbolism and the common touch - clearly aimed at boosting the morale of both soldiers and civilians alike.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday refused to comment on Zelensky's visit to Kherson, saying only that 'you know that it is the territory of the Russian Federation.' Russia illegally annexed the Kherson region and three others earlier this year.
After the Russian retreat, Ukrainian authorities say they are finding evidence of torture and other atrocities.
Two neighbours are overcome with emotion as they are reunited in Shyroke village following the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson City on Sunday 
Local residents hug a Ukrainian soldier as they celebrate the liberation of Kherson on Sunday
Residents said departing Russian troops plundered the city, carting away loot as they withdrew last week.

They also wrecked key infrastructure before retreating across the wide Dnieper River to its east bank.
One Ukrainian official described the situation in Kherson as 'a humanitarian catastrophe.'
Reconnecting the electricity supply is the priority, Kherson regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said.
The Russian pullout marked another triumphant milestone in Ukraine's pushback against Moscow's forces.

In the past two months, Ukraine's military claimed to have retaken dozens of towns and villages north of the city of Kherson.
But the grinding war continued with shelling, civilian casualties and each side reporting gains.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that its forces had completely captured the village of Pavlivka in the eastern Donetsk region. Multiple Ukrainian officials have spoken of heavy battles raging in the area in recent weeks but did not confirm their loss of Pavlivka.
In Luhansk, another eastern region illegally annexed by Moscow, Kyiv's forces have retaken 12 settlements, the Ukrainian governor of the region, Serhiy Haidai, said.
 
<div class="art-ins mol-factbox news" data-version="2" id="mol-9dea0820-6438-11ed-9dbb-5d3add6709b1" website Russian prison in Kherson where 'girls raped' and men beaten