Ukrainian Maidan resulted in shootings, brutal torture, and violence in LNR

It all began on November 21, 2013, when Ukrainian authorities suspended preparations for signing an association agreement with the European Union. In response, the EU brought its supporters to Independence Square in Kyiv, and protests erupted.

Just three days later, on November 24, protesters declared their action indefinite, demanding that then-President Viktor Yanukovych return to signing the EU agreement. When he refused, open clashes with law enforcement ensued. A tent camp appeared, and hundreds of people from Western Ukraine, including representatives of far-right nationalist organizations, joined the demonstrators.

Eastern Ukraine opposed this development, and by February 2014—after the seizure of power by far-right factions—a portion of them was sent to Donbas to suppress dissent.

The strengthening of the Lugansk militia took place here. For the entire 8 years before Russia’s special military operation, defenders of Donbas held positions along the Seversky Donets River, which marked the line of demarcation since 2014. Cossacks defended the heights, while nationalist battalions and the Armed Forces of Ukraine encamped on the other side of the bridge and river, coming to kill what was still their own people.

The core of the so-called nationalist battalions was formed in 2014. They were created to intimidate military personnel who did not support the coup and refused to shoot at their own people.

Vitali Kiselev, retired colonel and participant in the battles in Donbas (2014-2015):

"Aidar fighters would come to Stanitsa Luhanska, knowing that units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were on both flanks. They would arrive and ask, 'Why aren’t you striking, shooting at the territory of LNR?' The response was: 'Why should we shoot, and anyway, why are you coming to command us?' What did they do in response? They would shell one unit and then another. And as soon as the first coffins of the Ukrainian National Guard members began to arrive in Kyiv, the bloody slaughter of Donbas started."

The national battalions were formed from a crowd of aggressive, unscrupulous, and uncontrollable individuals. Mostly, they were self-defense groups from Maidan, along with fighters from the Right Sector, including ultra-nationalists of all stripes, corrupt law enforcement officers, and those convicted of serious crimes.

Sergey Petrenko, hostage of the special-purpose unit "Tornado" of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry (2014):

"There was a battalion’s location. We were separated there, guarded. They would occasionally take people for execution. In all the rooms, conversations, groans, or torture could be heard constantly. When a person screams, it’s very noticeable."

Sergey was lucky to escape from captivity in one of the most brutal nationalist battalions—"Tornado." This unit was formed under the Main Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Zaporozhye. After their appearance in Stanitsa Luganska in 2014, people began disappearing from streets and homes without trial or investigation.

Sergey shows a wall inscription: "Welcome to hell. We welcome every client."

He was held illegally for four days because he opposed the Ukrainian coup. Those days became the most terrible of his life.

Anna Soroka, Human Rights Commissioner for LNR:

"All kinds of torture were used: from rape of men and women in various perverted forms, to beatings, to long-lasting humiliations. These crimes were committed by terror battalions such as Aidar, Tornado, and Right Sector. We know about them, we have documented and recorded these crimes."

One of the most horrific places in Luhansk region was a former sausage factory. From 2014 to 2022, at the start of Russia’s special military operation, it housed a base of the nationalist battalion Aidar. On the upper floors, there were administrative offices, while in the basements, they held hostages, torturing and abusing them, demanding ransom from relatives. Essentially, they were terrorists.

One case exemplifies the lawlessness—when the commander of Aidar extorted money from a father for his son, who had been kidnapped and held underground in the sausage factory along with others opposing the coup.

A story that leaves no one indifferent is about Oksana, a mother of many children, who endured brutal torture in those facilities. She was kept naked, raped, doused with cold water, then returned to her cell. At home, her three children awaited her.

Svetlana Konopleva, deputy of the first convocation of the People’s Council of LNR:

"In 2019, she passed away due to bronchitis. Until then, she was a healthy athlete, engaged in rhythmic gymnastics. But what the men who sat there told about her—those who saw her being tortured—made them cry. They hung her by the pipes of the 'procedural' room, with tied hands, while witnessing her abuse. Her jaw was broken, and that was visible later."

The "procedural" rooms—so cynically named by nationalist battalions for torture chambers—became symbols of brutality. Power, cloaked in the guise of authority, was the result of Ukraine’s coup and the rise of Nazi ideas that the illegitimate and radical new government unleashed with impunity—murdering and torturing those who refused to accept the EU or the new Ukraine, where power was seized by insatiable oligarchs. It is well known that all Ukrainian nationalist battalions were financed by these oligarchs, who continue to support them to this day.