Petros Titenko, 45, told the Guardian about the three nights of hell in the hands of Russian and Chechen soldiers after he was arrested for violating a traffic ban, during which he was beaten, forced to kneel in his grave and shot in the head and at his feet. Titenko, his wife Julia, and his 21-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter were forced to move from downtown Borodyanka to Druzhnya on the outskirts of the city on February 26 after a shell blew up the roof of their home. Home. But their hell had not really begun yet, they said. In Druznia, the couple hunted day and night in their cellar, knowing, they said, that all civilians outside were being killed. But on the night of March 18, Titenko decided to try to escape after the curfew to check on his brother less than three miles away. Halfway through, at about 6:30 p.m., three Russian soldiers armed with machine guns came out of the forest and accused him of handing over Russian positions to the Ukrainian army. A search was performed, his hands were tied behind his back and a bag was placed over his head. Titenko said he was taken to the forest and tied with a rope to the back of a tank opened by soldiers so that he could inhale the smoke from the exhaust pipe at shoulder height. After 30 minutes the engine turned off and stayed there. Unable to move, Titenko stood all night in the icy cold, thinking only of the worst. In the morning, he said, he heard the Russians bring a second prisoner, who was gossiping about the soldiers in an apparent attempt to save his life. “He said a rocket fired from there, an artillery installation had been installed there,” Titenko said. “They told him it was valuable information and that they would release him.” It was a false and mocking promise. The two detainees were loaded on top of the tank and driven for an hour, Titenko said, trying to contain his emotions as he recalled the conversation he heard between two of his captors. “Did you bring prisoners back?” said one. “Well;” replied the second, to which he replied first: “I am tired of burying them in the ground.” Titenko said he was forced to lie in the mud where he stayed for four hours, as he estimates. He was then lifted to his feet and kicked in the side, which he realized was a pit. “Do not you want to add anything to your words?” asked the soldier, whose accent he recognized as Chechen. Petro Titenko with his wife, Julia. Photo: brochure Titenko asked to be allowed to pray as he heard the shelf being pulled into the soldier’s machine gun, ready to fire. “At that point I was sure they would kill me and bury me. Both my wife and children will never know where I died. At that moment I asked God: let me overcome it “. Titenko lay there in his grave, he believed, for another three hours with the second prisoner before being taken to a small bowl of porridge. He was then pushed into the back of a truck and his bag was forced back over his head. His hands, which now ached from the ties, were untied by their shackles. There was talk of the release of the men. The soldiers said they could remove the bags from their heads after 10 minutes. They did so and discovered that they were next to a cottage and that it was almost 6 pm on the second day of their captivity. Titenko’s captive decided to leave the forest. Titenko stayed at home but after an hour and a half more Russian soldiers invaded. They tied him up again and put his bag over his head again. “I was interrogated all night,” he said. “They wanted to know if I was a spy for the Ukrainian army. “They took all my documents, passport, car documents, driver’s license.” Titenko was taken, still blind, to a place where he said there were apparently other detainees. “Some shouted there, others cried,” he recalls. Tied, he and the other detainees were beaten with bends. “I was beaten for 15-20 minutes,” he said. “Then a machine gun fired over my head, shot me in the legs. “All this time I was praying to God to save my life.” Humiliation and intimidation continued, he said. They stripped him in his underwear. “We are looking for Ukrainian tattoos on your body,” said one soldier. “If we find them, we will cut them along with the skin.” “You are Bandera, you are a Nazi,” they shouted. The detainees were then forced to kneel, where they were allowed to ponder the worst for an hour. It was a concrete floor and after a while they were allowed to lie down due to the agony on their knees. An investigation was conducted. Something suspicious was found in a man’s pockets. “They took him out and I never saw him again,” Titenko said. Until now it was obvious, even through the bag in his head, that the prisoner with whom he was earlier in his ordeal had been re-arrested. “This man kept saying a lot of different nonsense,” Titenko said. “The Russians took him out and I never saw him again.” The night has come. The detainees were taken to a canteen where they were given porridge before being put in the shower, again with their heads covered, to sleep on the tiles. “There was so little space. “It was impossible to lie down there, so we all stood there all night,” he said. The next morning, the prisoners, cold, hungry and terrified of what would follow, loaded them into a truck, transported them and unloaded them. They were released. It was located near the village of Ozera, about 20 miles from Titenko’s house. He started walking but had no documents and knew that Russian checkpoints were coming. At first the Russian soldiers asked who he was. He replied that he was a prisoner and had no documents. He was allowed to pass, and then it was the same story for miles until he reached a fourth checkpoint where he passed a column of military equipment. “A Russian soldier told me I had to kneel and lower my head. Not to see Russian military equipment. “If I did not do it, they would shoot me in the head,” he said. He knelt and lowered his head about 25 times during the trip. When he got home, the family decided they had to leave and endured a minefield to head west.
