Photos of the most secret place in Donetsk have been posted, the word “coffee” has a completely different meaning here.

This place in Donetsk is surrounded by an extremely gloomy “glory”. It is a former art space in the workshops of the closed Donetsk insulation factory in the Budenovsk district.

Prisoners of the VSM enter this place already after the VSM building, located on Ševčenkos str. 26 (former headquarters of the Donetsk Oblast Tax Inspectorate), all the necessary evidence is extracted from them in the basements. According to a few people who managed to escape from there, the prisoners in this camp are sometimes held for years and forced to endure constant harassment and torture. They are also transported to forced labor, starting with pasting wallpaper in the guard rooms and ending with the maintenance of the military equipment of the firing range and the VSM combat unit.

In the early years of Isolation’s existence, most of the prisoners were former Cossacks and other violent supporters of the DLR. As the crackdown on Ukrainian supporters grew, the camp began to see an increase in the number of “spies of the Ukrainian Security Service (UST)” and similar categories of Ukrainian citizens. Many of them eventually regained their freedom through the prisoner swap.

But the paradox: several books on “Isolation” have already been written and many testimonies have been published, but there have been no photos of this place in recent years, there were only factory photographs taken before the war. Ukrainian law enforcement also faced difficulties with factual evidence.

“Isolation” has become one of the symbols of the DLR, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has planned a large-scale information campaign in 2021 to inform the international community about the closed concentration camps on European territory and illegal extrajudicial detentions and torture.

The Donetsk Tractor Driver posts immediately received a reaction from the former isolation prisoners: they recognized the photographed premises and confirmed that the photos were authentic. According to them, the photos have been taken since approximately the summer of 2016 from a guard room, a person who belongs to the VSM circle. The Donetsk tractor driver himself claims he wants to help Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to catch the culprits.

“I urge the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to use these documents to identify all detainees in the isolation prison,” wrote the anonymous, who published the pages of the DLR’s Special Operations Forces (SOP) detention magazine. VSM of June 2016, the vehicles and their documents. issued by relatives of illegal prison guards, photographs, as well as photographs of military equipment and torture chambers.

Spektr reviewed leaked photos of the Donetsk tractor driver with former prisoners Andrei Kochmuradov and Elena Lazareva, who were released in late 2016, spent about ten months there, but eventually regained their freedom through a prisoner exchange.

“I know the pictures from the camp, but so far I can’t understand what time they are from – it’s 2016 or 2017, or maybe even 2018,” said A. Kochmuradov. – This photo shows the windows of the guards’ dining room, decorated with drawings, this is how these windows seemed to us. The inscriptions “Buffet”, “Cafe” and these drawings of the exterior, we can enlarge the photos and see. Now, two years after we were transferred from Isolation to other DLR prisons, they probably look different. “

“It just came to our knowledge then. Sometimes he employed prisoners, known to us, those who had been released and those still held in the DLR. Once they also took me to clean this canteen. In it, employees of VSM fed for nothing, they just ate there. Some prisoners worked there. Yevgeny Brazhnikov and Jackson (detainees currently accused by the UST of collaborating with the regime and torturing other prisoners once) brought food from there to the cells. during the New Year, an unimaginable salad for all those who remained in prison. There they were not fed, but sometimes they were allowed to bring food, “said A. Kochmuradov.

He and Lazareva claim that these “Isolation” images correspond to the period in which they were imprisoned in this concentration camp. For example, there was also a tank in the boxes in front of the canteen. The prisoners in the pits have seen up to three tanks, three armored carriers. At that time, there were several cannons in the prison and military equipment was constantly being repaired in the repair hangars. The photos released now show much more technique than the prisoners saw, probably a sign that the photos were taken much later.

“The photos show this miniature catwalk that they let us go out to in the mornings. This photo was taken from the second floor window of the building opposite. It was installed under the guard rooms, their lounges, gym – E. Lazareva tried to determine a possible photographer and his angle. – There were two rooms located below the camp president’s residence. It had its own bathroom. However, it would be nice to understand the exact angle. While we were in prison, the camp used prisoners all the time as labor. People were forced to paste wallpaper in their rooms, there was a prisoner who in 2017 installed video surveillance cameras everywhere. During our period, a surveillance camera was also installed over the walkway yard, but it is not visible here in the photo. It gives the impression that some of the photos were taken before we appeared. “

The general view photo, showing an iron deer statue perched on a tericone, only further convinces interlocutors that the photos were taken from the guard facility. The prisoners did not see one of the most famous pre-war objects in the art space, the iron deer statue, “from the ground.” “It was photographed from a facility on the second floor; it is simply impossible to photograph a deer from the patio,” explained A. Kochmuradov.

Rooms with pallets and mattresses to sleep at night were not recognized by Spektr interlocutors. They themselves were kept in cellar chambers where the walls were solid. However, in this photograph, the hitherto unknown “Donetsk tractor driver” captured a room above the ground, the walls of which are made of huge blocks.

“Here is a photograph of all the objects used for torture. Here you see this military field phone, cables, duct tape and water bottles, said the former isolation prisoner methodically. – The cables were taped to the body with adhesive tape. and covered with water from a bottle, to make the current hit harder. Where were the wire contacts stuck? Wherever it was stuck, it filled up. They laid you down on that brown table and tied you up, and whoever it was. He tortured you, he sat on a chair. There is another photo there … “.

The person who took these photos was well aware of the torture technique and probably participated in them himself. There is another photograph with used rolls of tape, half-empty water bottles and a military field telephone (in a dark garbage bag) from which an electric current was released on the bodies of the prisoners. One of Spektr’s sources, with whom the publication interacted while preparing material on DLR political prisoners, recalled that local executioners used a kind of humorous jargon during their incarceration, calling these phones “war field polygraphs.” A. Kochmuradov, for his part, recalls that the torture room was called “café”. “So they asked, ‘And they haven’t taken you to the cafe yet?'” He said.

“The DLR VSM SOP detainee visit log was not available to prisoners, of course, but Kochmuradov and Lazareva identified some people who, according to the log, were questioned by VSM staff (commonly known as” Tatarino ” and “Chocholo”).

“There are Pisanec, Goncharova, Kulyš, Golikov, Novikov. These are, say, axakals, people who have been imprisoned for a long time. Before them, only Cossacks were sitting in Isolation in 2015, and later, when the massive UST spy plantation, these people have already been captured. Pisanec and Goncharova exchanged with us. Before the prisoner exchange, Lena and Goncharova were held in Snižnė, and I and Pisanec were held in 32 colonies. Golikov and Kulyš were also held We have not heard the nicknames of VSM employees as “Tatarinas”, “confirmed A. Kochmuradov the authenticity of the prisoners’ magazine.

“He uploaded a photo to Telegram showing a Volvo truck with numbers and some batteries in the distance,” Kochmuradov said. – These piles are confectionery products seized from the “Konti” factory. There, in the distance, another truck filled the mountains with these products. They were sweets, cakes, cookies. Sometimes they threw us out to classify them. “

“Sorting meant that we had to unwrap the candy from the packaging and pour it into the machine. They were so hung in the trunk in such a state that they were only suitable for feeding pigs. I began to respect the products of this company, even a few years after the expiration date, their “Konti” cookies could be eaten. They really supported us. “

The Donetsk tractor driver, for his part, claimed that the sweets had been transported to a hunting farm and posted a photo with a technical passport for an “outdated” truck issued by the DLR. Irina Evdokimova is listed in the documents as the owner of the vehicle. The documents of both trucks, published on the Internet, are issued in March 2018, which means that the anonymous ones worked on Isolation for quite some time, at least from 2016 to 2018.

On November 1, 2017, the Chief Military Prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatoly Matiosov, appointed Vasily Evdokimov, nicknamed “Lenin”, as head of the VSM Special Operations Center, who, according to the Ukrainian authorities, participated in the most forceful attacks against the Defense of the UST. Minister Colonel Alexander Char Colonel of the Intelligence Board Chief Maxim Shapovalov. Lenin was the curator of Isolation. It also turned out that the name of V. Evdokimov’s first wife is actually Irina.

The person who leaked the photos, who undoubtedly could have entered the camp and visited the guard facilities, the torture chamber and the military equipment, assures that his objective is to close the “Isolation” and other similar places. “Until now This is similar to the revenge of a former VSM employee against his former colleagues.In any case, however, this leaked information will serve for the investigation.

“I would like to thank the Donetsk Regional Police Board, who reacted promptly and took an interest in this material,” wrote the debunker.