Thread by @AlbanaKasapi

“I was a classic example of a person who belongs to ‘Russkiy Mir’ … Until 2014 it all looked very different and, I would say, theoretical. Then, it all fell apart… the war happened’’
🇺🇦 journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev on #Weekend ⁦@bbcworldservice⁩ 📻 1

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“ Russians understood the Russian World as drunken cossacks guarding check points in Donetsk who robbed any passing car. The Russian World was torture chambers in cellars where those cossacks &local so-called special forces tormented people with electric shock” @bbcworldservice

Aseyev, a Donetsk native, covered events in Eastern Ukraine as they unfolded until one day in 2017 when he was arrested by Russian-backed separatists because of his work. He was kept for 2.5 years in detention 3 #Weekend @bbcworldservice

“You can’t possibly describe (the place i was kept) as a prison. It was a modern concentration camp known as Izolyatsia…. They tortured people. I was also subjected to electric shock treatment.” 4
Aseyev interview On
#Weekend @bbcworldservice

Aseyev was released in 2019 as part of a prisoner exhange.  He has
documented his time in captivity in a memoir published in 2020, “The Torture Camp on Paradise Street.”  He has now joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defence in Kyiv. 5

#Weekend @bbcworldservice

‘Even with my experience I wasn’t prepared for what I saw when we went into Bucha... I witnessed torture  happening every day but that was torturing the living. In Bucha I saw cruelty that was even more brutal”6

#Weekend @bbcworldservice

Speaking of offensive in the East, Aseyev says: “I think the Russians are in a much weaker position than Ukrainian forces…The main problem for the Ukrainian army is not the Russian soldiers but their rockets & planes…which is why we need help from the West.” 7
@bbcworldservice

Aseyev says Ukraine will not hand over territory to Russia, but he adds: “So long as the current regime is still in power in Russia, not just Putin but all the people around him, this conflict will continue and we won’t be able to return anything to Ukraine.” 8
#Weekend

Interview with Ukrainian journalist and writer Stanislav Aseyev in full @bbcworldservice #Weekend 
Here from min 10:30
bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w1…

Cc @AseyevStanislav