Last August, Russians illegally detained 52-year-old Nikolai Shalamov from Kupyansk-Uzlovoy because of his pro-Ukrainian position. The man was kept in an overcrowded cell without fresh air for two weeks.
The Russians asked the man for information about local activists and pro-Ukrainian rallies. But for any answer they didn’t like, they hit Nikolai on the head and scared that they would use electric shock and take him to Russia. Nikolai told ZMINA documentaries about his two weeks in Russian captivity.
We were looking for flags, but found a scarf and an “ID”
On the morning of August 10, 2022, three armed Russians in balaclavas came to Nikolai’s apartment.
“In military uniform. They are very well equipped - not like ordinary soldiers. The eldest call sign was French. He was like their commander,” says the man.
The military first of all looked for national flags in the apartment.
“They gave me a US flag, brought it from New York. They asked me a lot about him. But I hid the flags earlier, so they didn’t find them,” the man adds.
The man thinks that one of the locals could have told the Russians about them.
Nicholas was also accused of belonging to national groups and nationalist organizations.
“Our Internet disappeared at the end of March. There was also no connection. Therefore, they could no longer somehow check my subscriptions on Facebook or my likes,” recalls Nikolai.
In the end, the Russians found yellow and blue scarves from the Kharkov football team “Metalist,” which the man had been a fan of for a long time. They also found photographs from football matches in which Nikolai was wearing this scarf. Each such discovery made the Russians very angry.
However, most of all they were angry and at the same time delighted when they found a homemade “ID” of a participant in the Revolution of Dignity in an old notebook.
“They tortured me with a stun gun and pliers.” A policeman from Izyum, survived the dungeons of the racists and did not betray
“I generated it on the Internet and printed it out. Although I wasn’t on the Maidan,” says the man.
They perceived this “certification” as confirmation of his involvement in pro-Ukrainian rallies.
“They told me: “So you got caught,” “Nothing is done by chance,” recalls Nikolai.
During the 40-minute search, the Russians found nothing except a scarf and a homemade “identity card.” Then they took Nikolai’s laptop and phone, and he was taken to a car - a jeep without license plates, on which large letters Z were painted in white paint.
“They tied my hands with reinforced tape. They wanted to put a bag on their head, but I asked not to do this. He said that I would close my eyes and not look,” the man recalls.
Instead, they pulled a light sports jacket over Nikolai’s head and pushed him into the car.
From time to time he managed to see the road through the cracks. The man understood that he was being taken to Kupyansk.
Along the way, the Russians asked about local activists:
“It takes 10-15 minutes to drive from Uzlovaya to Kupyansk. And all the way they called me different names. I said I don't know anyone like that. And it’s true: I didn’t know most of those they named,” adds Nikolai.
Then the military began to threaten him with torture. They said that during the torture he would tell them everything.
A day and a half on the street
Nikolai was brought to the temporary detention center at the Kupyansk regional department. There they took a chain with a cross, a ring, a smart watch and money from him.
“The workers there were partly Luhansk residents, and partly our corrupt cops - all young guys,” says Nikolai.
After being “received,” he was taken deeper into the site. They ordered me to lower my head and not look around.
“It was summer. The heat was so terrible that if the feeders (holes in the doors of the cells through which prisoners were given food - Ed.) were open, the heat would come out of them, like from an oven,” the man recalls.
But the guards went through all the cells and took him out into the courtyard for exercise.
“It has no roof, instead of a ceiling there is a lattice. When they took me there, there were already six or seven guys from the village of Gusinka,” says Nikolai.
These guys, according to him, were detained for allegedly taking weapons from a broken column of Russians near their village.
Some were tied up standing by guards or Russians.
“Iron tubes for pulling up were sticking out of the wall somewhere at face height - a kind of sports horizontal bar. And so they handcuffed the guys to those tubes,” the man continues.
Those who violated the curfew were also brought into the courtyard. These were usually released the next morning.
Nikolai was kept there for a day and a half. There were no amenities in the courtyard, and the detainees slept on the concrete floor.
In a chamber without air
The man was transferred from the exercise yard to cell No. 3. It is designed for four people, but Nikolai was already the 20th person there.
“Most of all, 21 people were kept in the cell. Then they unloaded it a little - there were 18-19 people,” says the former prisoner.
During the 16 days that Nikolai was kept in the cell, he was never taken outside.
“They took other guys to forced labor. But they didn’t take me anywhere,” he recounts.
It was very hot in the cell and there was almost no fresh air.
On the third day, the man's arms and legs became covered with red blisters. Over time, they burst and began to bleed.
“It started because of the constant heat, because of the sweat that flowed from me. It flowed, flowed, flowed from me - both at night and during the day,” the man recalls.
He asked to be examined by a doctor, but the occupiers did not respond to this. The only thing that saved me was the water in the washbasin:
“I had a pillow - a two-liter bottle. I filled it with water so that it wouldn’t shoot or rattle at night, and so I slept,” the man recalls.
In addition to him, a former ATO participant and military registration and enlistment office workers were kept in the cell.
“One of these workers was lying severely beaten. Everything was blue,” says Nikolai.
He recalls that after interrogations, almost everyone returned beaten. Many prisoners were tortured with electric shock, which leaves almost no traces - only red spots.
“They attached wires to the body, to the ears, to the legs, to the genitals. The screams were so loud…” recalls Nikolai.
According to him, the prisoners were abused most often in the evening: they were taken out for interrogation around 21:00 - 22:00 and could be kept there until one in the morning.
On the seventh or eighth day of his detention, Nikolai heard the Russians brutally beating one guy. According to him, the guy did not want to give the Russians the password for his phone:
“As I understand it, he told them the wrong password three times, and the phone was blocked. So they beat him like that,” the man recalls.
He heard the guy begin to wheeze from the beating, and then fell silent. Nikolai still doesn’t know who it was or what happened to him.
Interrogated and intimidated to take him to Russia
Nikolai was first taken for interrogation five days after his arrest, on August 15.
“As soon as I left the cell, they immediately pulled a black bag over my head, it smelled terribly. Everyone put those bags on, someone vomited in it... Phew, I remember that bag,” Nikolai winces at the memory.
The man didn't see anything, but thinks he was taken to a room on the first floor. The Frenchman and two more military men were already there.
“I realized from the voice that there were those who were taking me,” he recalls.
They tied Nikolai’s hands behind his back, sat him on a chair, and again began asking him about the activists and how he allegedly organized rallies.
“They thought I was one of the main ones at those rallies. They asked how I organized them. I answered that I had not been to any rallies,” says the man.
However, the Russians continued to press, throwing at him T-shirts with tridents found in the apartment, Ukrainian flags and even the name of Wi-Fi - “Putin Khuilo”.
Every time the man gave answers that the military did not like, he was beaten.
“Not with your hands, but with some object, maybe a book. They scared me that they would use electric shock, that they would take me to Russia, to Belgorod, if I didn’t say what needed to be said. The conversation lasted about an hour, but it seemed endless,” says Nikolai.
The man was also threatened that his wife would be detained.
At the end of the interrogation, the Russians said that Nikolai must write down in his cell all the names of local activists he knows, as well as write down when and where he met them.
“They asked, for example, about Nikolai Masliya. He ran for mayor of Kupyansk. Activist, very strong patriot. So almost all of Kupyansk knew him. But there were names that I didn’t know at all,” says the man.
He also had to write everything he knew about the rallies in Kupyansk at the beginning of the occupation.
“They took me out of the room and ordered the guard to give me a piece of paper, but no one gave me anything,” says Nikolai.
They returned for him five days later - on August 20. The bag was no longer put on the head and they were taken to the passport office, which used to work in the building of the regional department.
“There was a Frenchman there again and another one - I saw his face for the first time because he was not wearing a mask. And the Frenchman hid his face - he was wearing a mask that fitted him like a stocking,” recalls Nikolai.
During interrogations, according to the man, they called Putin “Tsar-Father”:
“They say that the Tsar Father told them to restore order in Ukraine.”
According to Nikolai, it was not sarcasm or anything like that. On the contrary, they said it with pride.
The second interrogation also lasted about an hour. But this time the man was not beaten. The Russians were primarily interested in the rallies:
“They asked me to read the poems that I allegedly read at these demonstrations and rallies. I replied that I had not read any poetry, because I had not been to any rallies.”
They also asked about a piece of paper on which he had to write about his participation in rallies and his acquaintance with activists. However, Nikolai replied that he did not write anything, because no one gave him the paper.
“They ask why I didn’t remind the guard about the sheet. And I answered that we, prisoners, cannot talk to the guards,” says Nikolai.
Then the Frenchman himself gave him a sheet and ordered him to write, in particular, where he was on May 2, 14:
“They decided to accuse me of being in Odessa when they burned people in the House of Trade Unions. At the same time there was a match between “Chernomorets” and “Metalist”. They wanted me to admit that I was involved in this. But I didn’t admit it - I wasn’t there,” the man recalls.
According to Nikolai, during the interrogation the Russians did not keep any protocols - everything was only in words.
After questioning, the man was taken back to his cell and told to “think further.”
Independence Day in custody
On this day, Nikolai thought he would die. He was taken out of the cell and taken to the courtyard, from where prisoners were being taken out by car. They put me facing the wall, and the guard ordered me to close my eyes and left. After some time, the Frenchman came and ordered to turn around towards him.
“I turned around, he was standing with a gun. Such a big, silver pistol. And he says that I’m khambets,” the man recounts that moment.
The Frenchman, according to him, began to reload the pistol and aimed at Nikolai’s head.
“He said that he would shoot me now. And he starts clicking the gun. I stand and think that this is the end for me,” recalls the former captive.
However, after some time, the Russian said that he was releasing Nikolai.
It was in this conversation that the Frenchman remembered the FSB: he said that they would give the man all the things that had been taken from him, “so that he would not later say that he was robbed by the FSB.”
The military man gave Nikolai an ultimatum - he will be released if he promises to go to church and light a candle for “the health of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin”, and hang the Russian flag at the entrance to the apartment.
After this, the man was taken back to his cell. The very next evening, at about 17:00, they gave him a cross, a ring, a watch, money and released him.
“I ran to the minibus. I could barely, because we couldn’t walk in that cell—the muscles atrophied,” says Nikolai.
The next day, the Frenchman with two Russians - in civilian clothes, but in balaclavas and with machine guns - arrived at the man’s apartment and left the Russian flag there.
“The Frenchman said that he had “reforged” me,” recalls Nikolai.
After this visit, the man decided to leave his village:
“About a week later, my wife and I packed our things, found those who were transporting through Russia to the Baltic countries, paid and left.”
Entry into Russia is prohibited until 2052
The couple left the occupation on September 3 through the then-occupied Peski-Logachevka crossing point.
At the border, their passports were taken away, and after a while Nikolai was called into the border guards’ office. There, as he thinks, the Ethesboite began to ask about where he served, when he served and for how long:
“And I served on a contract in the army from 1988 to 1995.”
The Russian was also very interested in information about Nikolai’s son, who now lives in Denmark:
“I asked how he was doing there, how much money he was making there.”
After interrogation, the man was informed that he was banned from entering Russia for 30 years, and he and his wife were taken out of the checkpoint.
“There was already a curfew, so we couldn’t leave there. So they stayed there. It rained, and we sat in the field until the morning,” recalls Nikolai.
The next day the couple returned home.
On September 6, the counter-offensive of the Ukrainian Armed Forces began in the Kharkov region. But in Kupyansk-Uzlovoy people were hiding in basements even before September 26, because the shelling did not subside.
Nikolai and his wife stayed at home until September 30, and then volunteers took them to Kharkov, where they lived for almost a year - until August of this year. We went home periodically, sometimes staying there for two or three days.
“The last time we went was on August 20 and came under fire right in Kupyansk at 6:30 in the morning near the police. We were very scared. And after that we decided to leave the country,” recalls Nikolai.
His wife has a second group disability, so he was allowed to travel abroad. The family is now at the second stage of integration in Norway.
“We are now living in a hostel - one of the local communes agreed to provide us with housing. At the end of November they must move to the Arctic Circle. We’ll just live there,” the man adds.
Nikolai still cannot fully recover from his Russian detention.
When he was first released, he began to treat the consequences:
“In that prison, I also became infected with some nasty thing - the skin began to peel off my hands. I don’t know what it was: some kind of fungal disease or something like that. Over time, it passed,” says Nikolai.
However, he still has panic attacks and has nightmares at night.
