"In the morning, they brought us to the so-called “location” on the territory of this camp. In the morning. Then they put us in the buses used to transport prisoners and divided us into groups. They took us somewhere together with our belongings. We understood that it was an exchange, because everything pointed to it. We spent several hours at the checkpoints in these buses. It was very cold, December 2019. They did not allow us to go to the toilet or anywhere else, and then they opened the doors. We went in a single file, and in parallel with us were people who were being exchanged from Ukraine, who were going to Donetsk. That's how the exchange took place."
"This means that, as far as I remember, seventy-six people returned to Ukraine from our side, and about one hundred and twenty, so about fifty people more, were handed over from Ukraine. Because they have always made disproportionate exchanges. You see, for Ukraine, the value of its people is quite high. And Russia does not value people, so the exchanges are like that, that's why the agreements are like that. So we were releasing more people than we were taking to our territory."
"In general, this is a fairly large area of the former plant, but for the prison itself they use one building of the former administrative premises. For example, the former accounting department of the plant was located there. It's clearly written on one of the cells, they haven't even changed the sign: ‘Accountants’. It sounds like irony. The administrators there were and are classic sadistic psychopaths who were given permission to do whatever they do to prisoners. And that's why sarcasm, which is absolutely unhealthy, played such an important role in their relations with prisoners. And one of the cells was called ‘de lux’. De lux, because it was very small, designed for two people. It was impossible to lie down there because it was so small and there was no ventilation. I spent about half an hour there, it was a technical measure, when they were looking for a room for us, instead of letting us go outside, they put us in this so-called ‘de lux suite‘. They called it a ‘suite’. The showers of the plant were used as a punishment cell. There were no bunks, just people lying on mattresses on the floor. There is a ‘stakan glass‘ cell where you cannot sit, only stand. It's in the basement, where there was some kind of technical room, maybe ventilation. They used it to hold people who were found guilty. You just stand there, and it's so cold that you freeze in five to ten minutes. There is such an unhealthy sarcasm there. And there are eight rooms in total, plus several basements. When I was there, in terms of the number of beds, the maximum number of people in “Izolyatsia” was eighty. But in 2014, including the basements, they held one hunderd people there."
"It's just a bright office with a window overlooking the trolleybus stop. There are people standing there, you can see them. Not long ago, you were standing there yourself waiting for the trolleybus. And now you are sitting on a chair, with your hands tied behind your back, and you are being beaten with a rubber truncheon. On the same spot on your leg, which is swollen like a balloon. And they ask you questions, completely abstract questions. Why did you sell out the people of Donbass, why did you betray the people of Donbass. The people of Donbass want to be with Russia, why are you so pro-Ukrainian? This kind of propaganda talk. And after that, after half an hour of such beatings and rantings, I was transferred to the next room, where professional torture and professional interrogations began. People came in balaclavas, masks, and tracksuits. They brought a field phone called a “tapik”, a field coil telephone. You can see it in old Soviet films. It has a tube and to make a call, you need to turn the handle. An electric current passes through it. I also used such a ‘tapik’ at the front, transmitting information of the situation. But for the FSB and the MGB, for the Russians, this is the number one torture tool. Even in 2024 and 2025, the people we release say the same thing. Whether in the occupied Kherson region, Crimea, Kyiv region, or deep in Russia, they use tapiks, insert wires into different parts of the body and apply electricity. In my case, it was the simplest option - they screwed two wires to my thumbs, and then twisted one wire and attached it to my ear."
"In fact, I wrote about a larger number of topics, starting with the social and psychological portraits of people who joined these units and ending with the elements of propaganda used by the Russian Federation to play on the fears of residents of Donbas and Donetsk region. I understood this very well. And in fact, at some point in the fifteenth or sixteenth year, this territory turned into an absolute Soviet Union, which I described in my articles and especially in my photographs. For example, to get to the centre of Makyivka, you had to drive twenty minutes from our neighbourhood, which was on the outskirts of the city. And when you drive these twenty minutes, every two or three hundred metres there is a pillar with an advertisement, a billboard. And there are basically the same signs that greet you. They wish you a happy New Year or any other holiday, and all that changes is the name. Minister so-and-so, or Alexander Zakharchenko, the head of the DPR. The text is identical, the picture with the flags of the DPR and Russia is identical, only the surname changes. Of course, I did not live in the Soviet Union in this sense, but it was like in the 1970s, to use a historical analogy. It was the like in Brezhnev's time."
"It is very important for a Donetsk person to work. Just like for a Soviet person. You work all your life, you don't actually get anything for it, you survive from month to month. But what else is the meaning of life? You just have to work. When dozens, hundreds, thousands of people gather on a square and do nothing, it basically means that they (the Maidan) are in the wrong. This was a very simple logic of the people of Donetsk. And I had the same logic at the time. But I understood it philosophically. I started to look at it through all these Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Ilyin's philosophy and so on. And all this was repeated and continued until 1 March 2014, when the first separatist rally took place in Donetsk. I came to it with a friend, out of curiosity. And when I saw what was happening there, the construction of the “Russian world” began to collapse."
"Firstly, we saw a lot of buses with Russians being brought from Rostov region right in front of the administrative building in Donetsk. They were brought there by buses, they created a crowd, a mass. But there were also many locals, from Makyivka, from Donetsk, from the region. It is interesting that the destruction of this construction of the “Russian world” began with flags. From the flags that I saw on the square. There were flags of the Soviet Union, flags of Russia, flags of the Northern Fleet of the Russian Federation. But there were also the flags of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which we heard about for the first time in our lives that day. It was March 2014, I remember standing with a friend in the square and there were so many people waving these flags. And we asked them what those flags were. And they said: "DPR, Donetsk People's Republic. And it seemed strange to us. What is the Donetsk People's Republic? Russia, the Soviet Union, that rings a bell in the Donetsk region. But the DPR? It sounded like a joke. And then I saw the so-called “people's governor” Pavel Gubarev, who looked like a drug addict. He was pale and couldn't string two words together. And basically, everything continued to develop in this fashion."
Stanislav Aseyev grew up in Makyjivka near Donetsk, in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. He studied philosophy and religious studies and began writing books. After university, he tried unsuccessfully to join the French Foreign Legion. When the Dignity Revolution broke out in Kiev in 2013, he, like most of his neighbours, was against it. It was only his participation in a separatist demonstration in March 2014 that opened his eyes. He considered the Donetsk People’s Republic to be an artificial construct and began reporting from the occupied territories for Radio Liberty. In September 2017, he was arrested and tortured, and for over two and a half years he was imprisoned in unofficial facilities in Donetsk, in particular in Izolacya, the former factory. He was released thanks to a prisoner exchange, and wrote a book about his experiences. After 2022, he set up the Justice Initiative Fund, a fund to find and catch Russian war criminals. From 2023 to 2024 he fought at the front, where he was wounded twice.
