New evidence released today by a first-of-its-kind Mobile Justice Team supporting Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General’s investigation into Russian war crimes has revealed plans and financial records directly linking torture chambers in recently liberated Kherson to the Russian State, demonstrating Putin’s calculated strategy to extinguish Ukrainian identity.

The Mobile Justice Team was established by international human rights law firm, Global Rights Compliance, in April 2022. The team is led by world-leading British barrister, Wayne Jordash KC, Founder of Global Rights Compliance, and is formed of top international and Ukrainian lawyers who can rapidly deploy around the country to assist Ukraine’s investigators and prosecutors to collect and rigorously analyse evidence of atrocities.

Evidence collected by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General and analysed by the Mobile Justice Team includes plans used by Putin’s occupying forces to establish, manage and finance at least 20 torture centres in Kherson, although many more are expected to emerge as investigations continue. The torture centres in recently liberated Kherson were used to subjugate, re-educate or kill Ukrainian civic leaders and ordinary dissenters.

The new evidence reveals that the torture chambers were run by different Russian security agencies including the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB), local Kherson FSB and the Russian Prison Service. Financial records showing a direct linkage between the torture centres and the Russian State have also been uncovered by Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General.
One torture chamber was uncovered in the basement of an office block and another in a ‘ready-made’ former pre-trial detention facility. Tyres were burnt in the buildings to cover up evidence of what had taken place there as the Russians rapidly fled Kherson, but some prisoner graffiti and the numbers on doors where Ukrainian prisoners were detained remained.
Evidence has now been collected from over 1,000 torture chamber survivors in Kherson, with physical beatings, electric shock torture and waterboarding among common criminal acts used against Ukrainian women and men held in Kherson in an effort to eliminate resistance to the occupation. Pro-Russian slogans, poems and songs were discovered on cell-walls, which prisoners were forced to learn and recite. Over 400 people are also reported to have vanished from Kherson torture centres and it remains unknown whether they have been killed or taken to Russian-held territory.

Those incarcerated included anyone who had a connection with the Ukrainian state or civil society – ranging from military and civil servants to journalists, teachers and community volunteers. Many victims reported being randomly stopped on the streets and detained for holding ‘pro-Ukrainian’ material on their phones.

For Wayne Jordash KC, Managing Partner of Global Rights Compliance and Mobile Justice Team Lead, the evidence from Kherson speaks to a wider, inherently criminal plan on the part of the Kremlin:

“Putin’s plan is to occupy Ukraine, subjugate the Ukrainian population to Russian rule and destroy Ukrainian identity. This plan is becoming clearer as the evidence of war crimes proliferates and as our investigations progress.

“The mass torture chambers, financed by the Russian State are not random but rather part of a carefully thought out and financed blueprint with a clear objective to eliminate Ukrainian national and cultural identity. The torture centres are the tip of the iceberg in Russia’s inherently criminal plan to subjugate or destroy Ukrainians. They are designed to eliminate and destroy large parts of the Ukrainian population in order to enable the remainder to be enslaved. This is yet more evidence of genocidal tactics baked into Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity in the areas under Russian occupation. Many more torture centres certainly exist around Ukraine in occupied areas and are being funded by Putin’s credit card.”

Russia’s war crimes include indiscriminate shelling of civilians, deliberate killing, torture, rape and other forms sexual violence, looting and forced displacement on a huge scale, as well as mass child abductions. An estimated 14,000 children have so far been abducted and forcibly displaced to Russia for ‘re-education’ and forced adoption since the invasion last year.[1] The goal is to recondition the children and remove any sense of Ukrainian identity, national culture or history.

Before the invasion, Ukraine had 8000 prosecutors but only the war crimes department and two units (Donetsk and Lugansk) had expertise in investigating war crimes. The establishment of the Mobile Justice Team by human rights law firm, Global Rights Compliance, is helping to support the Office of the Prosecutor General and their new department and nine regional offices with the expertise, experience and policies needed to help gather evidence for potential use to prosecute international crimes. This will ensure more perpetrators are brought to account and the largest number of innocent Ukrainian survivors receive the support and see the justice that they deserve. The Mobile Justice Team consists of 10 Ukrainian lawyers (and 25 international prosecutors and investigators), some of whom have returned from living and working overseas, who are strongly committed to finding justice for the crimes committed against their country and people, and to help build the foundations for a positive future for Ukraine as a free, independent country.

Wayne Jordash KC continues: “The evidence of Russia’s war crimes is growing exponentially and becoming more complex as time goes on. The Mobile Justice Team is working round the clock with Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General to ensure these crimes are documented and investigated as thoroughly as possible and with maximum integrity so that we can create a bedrock of truth and a historical record which can be used both to counter Russia’s misinformation and to find justice for Ukraine’s victims.”

The Mobile Justice Team’s investigations are made possible due to funding from the UK’s Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the EU and US State Department.