I survived the Olenivka prison massacre

It has been two years since the Olenivka Prison Massacre, one of the war's most egregious alleged war crimes. We take you behind the scenes to share what it was like to be there.

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Arseniy Fedosiuk has seen some of the worst this war can offer.

He’s only 31, but he’s already fought the Russian invaders for a decade as a sergeant in the Azov Regiment. After the full-scale invasion, Fedosiuk witnessed firsthand the brutal destruction of Mariupol and then fought in the famous Azovstal steelworks siege. 

Fedosiuk, right, underneath the Azovstal Steel Works during the siege in 2022.

Many of his friends and comrades died during the siege, but he survived and was captured. As a prisoner of war, he spent seven months in Russian detention where he was tortured and slowly starved. 

Two months after his capture, explosions tore through a building right next to where he was kept as a POW in a make-shift prison colony, near the town of Olenivka, Donetsk Oblast. 

If proven to be carried out by Russia, as the evidence suggests, the incident would be among the most atrocious war crimes carried out by Russia since the full-scale invasion began – and a mockery of the Geneva Conventions’ protections for POWs.

The notorious incident became known as the Olenivka Prison Massacre. 

And Arseniy was there.