Russian prison doctor faces accusations of sexualized torture and abuse from former Ukrainian prisoners

Ukrainians who returned from Russian captivity, numbering dozens, accused their prison doctor of systematic sexualized and psychological torture and of refusing to treat acute diseases. Reporters tried to locate him.

In the summer of 2023, a virulent scabies epidemic broke out in Prison Colony No. 7, deep in the Russian heartland.

The infestation, caused by mites that trigger intense itching and a red rash, took an especially serious turn for Ihor Shyshko, a Ukrainian prisoner of war. 

“It was all spreading into my eyes,” he said, recalling his decision to try to obtain medical treatment. “I thought I should ask, maybe they’d give me brilliant green [antiseptic dye], maybe I’d smear it on, maybe it would somehow stop it.”

Instead, Shyshko recalled, the prison doctor used the dye not as treatment, but as a weapon of sexual humiliation — painting his body and then summoning others to look.

“Here he drew a man’s penis,” Shyshko said, pointing to his face. “Here he drew breasts. And here,” he added, pointing to his back, “he wrote the inscription ‘fuck here,’ with an arrow pointing to my buttocks. … Then he called someone else to come in and see what was happening.”

Shyshko, a 43-year-old special services officer, had been captured in the first weeks of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, and ended up spending about a year in Colony No. 7 before being freed in a prisoner exchange.

Ihor Shyshko speaks at a Veterans’ event held by the Kharkiv Regional Council in December 2025.

He is one of nearly 50 former Ukrainian prisoners of war who spoke with reporters from Schemes, an investigative project run by RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, about their experiences there, some 230 kilometers to the northeast of Moscow in a small village called Pakino. In three detailed interviews and dozens of chat conversations, the men described a litany of abuses, including physical beatings, medical neglect, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, and other deprivations.  

Several men described spending entire days on their feet and periods of intense hunger, their daily ration at times amounting to a few pieces of soggy, moldy bread. Multiple prisoners recalled being taken to guard dog enclosures instead of exercise yards, and some said the guards made several inmates crawl, bark, and even drink from a dog bowl themselves.

Two inmates spoke in detail about how prisoners were made to drag themselves along the floor using only their arms, scraping their legs until they bled, in an ordeal called “crawling like a seal.” They also said they suffered a torture method whose name, bastenada, one of them learned from a book: repeated baton blows to the soles of the feet that made walking impossible.

In their interviews, about half of the prisoners who spoke with reporters also described vicious abuse by a man entrusted with their medical care: A prison doctor who they gave nicknames like “the veterinarian” and “Dr. Death.” Prisoner after prisoner told stories of the man who mistreated sick inmates and seemed to derive a grotesque pleasure out of forcing them to enact homosexual scenes.

“And do you know what was the most terrifying thing?” Shyshko said. “You understand that everyone else depends on you. If you don’t do that now, they’ll leave the whole cell without food … It was collective punishment. The young ones, the older ones, the ones that are sick — they all depend on you.”

None of the prisoners knew the doctor’s surname. However, by cross-referencing scraps of information collected from numerous prisoners, combined with public sources of information, leaked databases, and law enforcement sources, Schemes identified the doctor as a man named Vyacheslav Cherdantsev.

Cherdantsev didn’t respond to multiple phone calls and messages seeking comment. Neither the administrator of Colony No. 7, Yury Fomin, nor Russia’s central Federal Penitentiary Service responded to requests for comment.

The treatment described in this story fits a widely documented pattern: According to a range of independent sources, including UN monitoring missions and inquiries, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), and the European Court of Human Rights, Ukrainian prisoners in Russian custody are subject to widespread and systematic abuses that include torture, sexual violence, and denial of medical care. In a previous investigation, reporters from Schemes identified another Russian prison doctor in the Republic of Mordovia who shocked prisoners with stun guns and forced them into humiliating rituals for his amusement.

‘God Forbid Any of You Complain’

Most of the Ukrainians held at Colony No. 7 were members of the Ukrainian armed forces, like Shyshko.

But not all. The prison also held civilians like Volodymyr Mykolaienko, the former mayor of the Ukrainian city of Kherson who had refused to collaborate with occupation authorities, and Stephen James Hubbard, the last American the U.S. government considers “wrongfully detained” in Russia.

Prison Colony No. 7, in Pakino, Russia

Another long-time prisoner was a Ukrainian journalist, 51-year-old Dmytro Khyliuk, who was detained by Russian soldiers in his village near Kyiv at the beginning of the war. He spent over two years in Colony No. 7 before finally being released as part of a prisoner exchange last August.

Khyliuk, who was held in the same cell as Shyshko, described the psychological toll of the prison’s monotony and isolation. He recalled a moment when a stray cat ran into his cell during an inspection; the men caught it and were overwhelmed with joy to hold a living creature. Another time, he said, they found a single sunflower seed in the yard and passed it around, taking turns marvelling at its sweet smell.

Khyliuk described a May 2023 visit by the Red Cross as a "disgrace" and a "parody.” The visiting officials asked the prisoners if they were well fed, he said, as Russian guards wearing body cameras stood nearby. “They had warned us,” he said. “‘Tomorrow you’re going to have guests, and God forbid any of you complain.’”

(In response to a request for comment, the International Committee of the Red Cross wrote that the organization requires its staff adhere to strict rules of impartiality,  that it “seeks improvement” of detention conditions through private engagement “with the relevant authorities,” and that it cannot say anything more because “we have found this confidential and bilateral dialogue is the most successful at achieving our humanitarian objectives.”)

Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Khyliuk spent two years in the Colony No. 7.

Khyliuk reserved some of his strongest language for the prison doctor, whom he called “the ultimate scumbag.”

He and other former prisoners accused the doctor of extreme medical neglect, withholding medicine, forcing prisoners to reuse dirty bandages, and threatening them if they removed them without his permission. According to their accounts, even the outbreak of scabies — which can be easily treated with a topical cream or oral medication — became an opportunity for abuse.

“They would often throw a person with scabies into another cell where there was no scabies,” Khyliuk said. “So there was no logic in terms of, you know, preventing an epidemic. On the contrary, the logic was to spread this epidemic. I, for example, had it twice.”

Shyshko said the scabies “treatment” involved prisoners being stripped of their clothes for long periods. “I was totally naked for a month,” he said. “There were 15 of us like that in one cell.”

“I asked the doctor, what is the point of this, that we’re naked?” he recalled. “He said: ‘Why you’re in this cell? This is a cold cell, so that the mite will die. Preferably along with you.’”

At least one prisoner pointed to the doctor as his chief tormentor. “Undoubtedly, he was the main one,” he said. “He beat us because we are Ukrainians.”

“I had problems with my legs, but he never gave me any medication,” said another. “His prescription was to eat less and walk more.”

The prisoners had various nicknames for the doctor, including “Doctor Death,” “Doctor Pus,” and “Sandal,” because he wore sandals in both winter and summer. But it was konoval, a derogatory term for a crude animal doctor, that was his most universal moniker.

Twenty-five year old marine David Pradchenko, taken prisoner while defending the city of Mariupol, was in the colony at the same time as Shyshko and Khyliuk. He too described medical horrors: On one occasion, he said, other medical staff ripped off his toenail without anesthesia in the doctor’s presence.

An Instagram post shared by photographers Vlada and Kostiantyn Liberov shows David Pradchenko returning to Ukraine after being held at Prison Colony No. 7.

When the prisoners weren’t being mistreated, their ailments were ignored. Pradchenko recalled the doctor dismissing complaints with a rhyme meant to comfort children: “The kitten aches, the puppy aches, and yours will pass too.” Other times, instead of offering treatment, he would make the sign of the cross and tell a prisoner to “Go with God,” or instruct them to recite the Lord’s Prayer as a cure.

Pradchenko says his cellmate, a 23-year-old marine Pavlo Polovyi, suffered from a severe stress-induced rash for which he was repeatedly denied medical treatment. Pradchenko believes that this drove Polovyi to his breaking point, ultimately pushing the exhausted soldier to take his own life. He hanged himself in May 2023, though his body was not returned to Ukraine until the following year.

The grave in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad region of Pavlo Polovyi, a marine who died at the age of 23 in the Pakino penal colony.

Multiple former prisoners independently detailed the doctor’s inclination toward sexualized violence and homophobic humiliation.

They accused him of regularly inspecting and commenting on prisoners’ genitals and backsides without medical justification and of routinely forcing naked prisoners to parade around, hug, dance in pairs, and simulate sexual acts, turning this into a show for himself and the guards: “From a medical point of view, I’m looking to see which angle is best,” one former prisoner recalled him saying. Another said he heard him demanding that captives invent “scenes” to perform by evening, specifying exactly which prisoners he would like to participate.

This psychological abuse was coupled with abusive physical contact, the prisoners said, such as using a pencil to stroke prisoners’ buttocks. He also made a “hobby” out of coercing them into consenting to unwarranted rectal examinations, according to one prisoner. Pradchenko and several others recalled him threatening rape.

‘I Remember The Hands’

In an effort to identify the doctor, reporters attempted to contact about 90 former prisoners from Colony No. 7. Nearly 50 provided leads and consistent information, recalling a man named Vyacheslav who had a heavy build, was about 175-190 cm tall, and between 45 and 55 years old.

From KibOrg, another Ukrainian outlet, reporters obtained a list of about 1,150 current and former employees of Medical Unit #33 of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service, which is responsible for the Vladimir region, where Colony No. 7 is located.

On the list were four men named Vyacheslav. Cross-referencing by age and other details allowed reporters to zero in on Vyacheslav Cherdantsev.

Because his personal social media accounts are private or inactive, reporters tracked down decade-old photographs on pages belonging to his relatives. When these were shown to the former captives, several said that the man bore a strong resemblance to the doctor.

To verify the connection, reporters obtained a more recent photo of Cherdantsev from the Russian messaging platform Max. When shown this image, more than 30 former prisoners said he resembled the abusive doctor, with about a dozen expressing absolute confidence.

A recent photograph of Vyacheslav Cherdantsev, which reporters used to verify his identity.

“This is 100 percent the doctor,” Shyshko said. “The eyes, the look, and the hands. I remember the hands quite, quite thoroughly.”

According to leaks from Russian databases and aggregated open source information, Cherdantsev received a salary from Medical Unit #33 at least until 2025. On the Russian social network VK, he is listed as the friend of several other active medical workers at the colony.

The Russian database leaks show that the 48-year-old Cherdantsev was born in a village in Kyrgyzstan and has worked as a medical practitioner at a juvenile correctional facility in the country, where he was involved in HIV prevention and treating drug addiction.

Around 2013, he moved to Russia, settled in the village of Pervomaysky near Pakino, bought an apartment, and worked at an orphanage. In 2014, he officially obtained a Russian passport.

Ukrainian reporters from Schemes have shared their findings with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, who confirmed that they have already recorded testimony from a number of returning prisoners from Colony No. 7 who alleged abuse by a prison doctor. They continue to interview newly released captives.

Meanwhile, according to the Ukrainian government, some 7,000 Ukrainians remain imprisoned in Russia.