A young Ukrainian orienteer is a prisoner of the Russians accused of sabotage.
The Ukrainian orienteer has been a prisoner for months. AOP, Screenshot
Ukrainian guide Mute Zviah says Swedish Aftonbladet in an interview with his friend Kirill Barannik too the story. Zviahin lost contact with his friend shortly after the war broke out in the spring of 2022.
Then, last May, he read in a news article about a navigator who was a prisoner of the FSB, Russia’s security service.
Barannik was accused of sabotaging train tracks.
Barannik confessed to his actions and is now awaiting a trial, the start of which is impossible to accurately predict in wartime. Zviahin, who was in an orientation camp in Sweden, says that his friend’s confession was obtained through torture and is not truthful.
Zviahin read to a Swedish newspaper the statement of his long-time friend’s lawyer, which describes the events in the Russian prison.
– First they attached electrical connectors to my fingers, toes, ears and buttocks with which they tortured me. They threatened to rape me with a stick. They hit and kicked my body and head, Zviahin reads about Barannik’s experiences.
The young man who was a prisoner has broken ribs. He said that he felt pain in his kidneys and that he partially lost feeling in his right hand. Zviahin mentions that Baranik has had to drink an intoxicating liquid.
– The next day he woke up with bruises on his wrists.
The lawyer says that Barannik is waiting for his trial in a three square meter room with three other prisoners. Prisoners are not allowed to sit or lie down.
Zviahin, who has spent the normal life of an orienteering as best he can, believes that he will still be at the front. Missing my friend is overwhelming, especially after the information revealed during the summer.
– It is hard to believe what has been done to Kirill. It’s horrible. I want him here, at the competition or at the training camp, Zviahin tells the Swedish newspaper.