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Ukraine shares ‘chilling’ pictures of Russian torture chambers as prisoners send prayers

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Kherson in Ukraine came to an end after Putin’s forces announced their withdrawal from the Ukrainian city. However, the remains of the horror episodes of the time when Ukrainian civilians were put into torture chambers by the Russian army still haunt the city.

Kherson was the first major city to fall to Russian forces when the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February.

However, in just a few weeks, the Ukrainian military recaptured territory in the north of the region and pushed as far as 30km (19 miles) south along the Dnieper, threatening to trap Russian troops.

A tweet shared by the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine displays a photo of the wall in one of the torture chambers in Kherson.

The wall has been scribbled by the civilians pleading “strength” from God as they rot in the torture chambers.

The inscriptions were written in Russian language.

The tweet said: “The wall of a torture chamber in Kherson, where Russian kept civilians hostage.

“The inscriptions ‘Pray to God for us’, ‘God give us strength’, are written in Russia.

“No matter what language you spoke, the slightest disobedience to the occupiers was enough to send you to the dungeon.”

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Kherson’s pre-war population was nearly 300,000, but Ukrainian officials estimate that about half that number have fled the city.

President Volodymyr Zelensky had recently said Ukraine had gathered evidence of at least 400 war crimes committed by Russian troops during their occupation of the area, including killings and abductions, in addition to widespread destruction of infrastructure.

One Ukrainian official described the situation in Kherson as “a humanitarian catastrophe”.