A Ukrainian soldier, who was captured by the Kremlin-backed private paramilitary company PMC Wagner, revealed that the mercenaries tortured him for fun “the way a cat plays with a mouse" during the captivity. Rather than interrogating, extracting intelligence or information, Wagnerites tortured the Ukrainian soldier after they captured him from the beleaguered town of Bakhmut in Donetsk that witnessed the bloodiest battle since WWII, the 36-year-old Ukrainian soldier from the 67th mechanised brigade told Post. 

Ilia Mykhalchuk spent approximately 46 days as a prisoner of the Wagner Group before he was released in a prisoner swap. He was brutally tortured for 'amusement' by the Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries in the cell.

'They were playing with us, the way a cat plays with a mouse'

While he was held by Wagner, Mykhalchuk said that he wasn’t interrogated for battlefield information or intelligence but was constantly tortured psychologically. “They tried to make us believe that we couldn’t trust each other and that it was a kill-or-be-killed situation,” Mykhalchuk said.

“They were just playing with us, the way a cat plays with a mouse – when he catches it before he kills it," he added.

Medics crudely amputated both of the Ukrainian soldier's arms above the elbow that was damaged in battle. They did not stitch the skin before bandaging in order which made the soldier suffer more due to the inflicted pain. He's now in a specialized facility in the United States which is outfitting him with arm prosthetics by experts who tended to the American troops who lost their limbs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. 

Part of Mykhalchuk's ordeal was attributed to the brigade that he was a part of, which finds its links in the far-right nationalist group Right Sector making it one of the most hated and loathed by Russian forces. While normally, the Wagner would have killed Mykhalchuk "right away,” instead they decided to take him as a prisoner.

Mercenaries stripped off his tourniquet and replaced it with crude rubber tubing making tight knots as they moved him to the Russian-held territory. There, he was taken to a dark basement and sedated. When he woke, Mykhalchuk was psychologically tortured by his captors who sadistically asked vague questions such as his fondness for fishing. These Wagner fighters weren't jail convicts but more professional, he said. 

Battered city of Bakhmut in Ukraine's Donetsk region. Credit: Libkos/AP

Wagner Group's mercenaries played a significant role in the battle for Bakhmut before their short-lived mutiny in June. Paramilitary company's boss, dubbed famously as 'Putin's chef' Yevgeny Prigozhin, had announced then that he would instruct his mercenaries not to capture prisoners of the war (POWs) anymore. In April, more than 80 Ukrainian and Russian prisoners of war were released in the prisoner swaps. 

Wagner fighters, who are mostly mercenaries, convicted killers, and former prisoners who serve to reduce jail time are known for their brutal tactics such as murder, torture, rapes, human rights abuses, punishing the wounded by execution on the spot on the frontlines, and beheading the deserters using the sledgehammer—their symbolic weapon.  Wagner mercenaries' merciless attitude on the battlefield has been widely documented. 

“We will kill everyone on the battlefield," the group's chief Prigozhin said in an audio recording posted by his press service. "We will take no more prisoners of the war!” Wagner's boss' threats came in response to the "intercepted phone conversations" between the soldiers by Ukraine's Intelligence.

Phone intercepts obtained by Kyiv's military in January revealed the brutal indifference of the Wagnerites against soldiers on the battlefield. One soldier is heard talking about another who apparently tried to surrender to the Ukrainians. “The Wagnerians caught him and cut his f**king balls off,” the soldier said, according to the wiretapped conversation.

Ukrainian assessment shows that Wagner's deadly fighters left their own wounded soldiers on the battlefield for hours in order to continue the assaults. Russian Army, meanwhile, also began adapting Wagner's tactics and became more like Wagner's fighters. “Instead of the classic battalion tactical groups of the Russian Armed Forces, assault units are proposed," Ukraine's assessment revealed. 

Mercenaries from Russian military company Wagner launched joint drills with the Belarusian military. Credit: AP

Wagner mercenaries, who widely use communications equipment made by Motorola, believe in exploiting real-time drone intelligence on the battlefield using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), according to a report compiled by Ukrainian Intelligence. Two former commanders of Wagner, Azmat Uldarov and Alexey Savichev, admitted that they killed more than 20 Ukrainian children and teens in Bakhmut and the Donetsk region in the footage that appeared on a Russian human rights organization operating in exile in France.

In Soledar, the Wagner Commanders revealed that they used tactics such as using explosives to blow up pits with more than 50 wounded prisoners of war, and at times killed their own compatriots who were unwilling to continue the invasion. They claimed that the instructions to shoot and kill were given by Prigozhin, the chief financier of the mercenaries. 

“I killed children with [my own] hands,” ex Wagner commander Uldarov said in his testimony on the footage. “As we entered Soledar and Bakhmut, we got the order to destroy everyone: men, women, children, elderly. She was screaming, a little girl, don’t know if she was 5 or 6. And I shot her. A controlled shot [in the head].”

Wagner tossed grenades on injured POWs in trenches

In the most detailed first-person accounts of atrocities committed by Wagner, one of the group's 'storming troops' fighter acknowledged killing and torturing dozens of Ukrainian prisoners of war. An ex-Russian convict recruited by Wagner, Alexey Savichev, 49, in a phone interview admitted to summary executions of the POWs. “We were told not to take any prisoners, and just shoot them on the spot,” the Wagnerite said. Savichev is a convicted murderer who was released from prison in Voronezh, a city in southwest on 12 September on a presidential pardon.

In Bakhmut, Wagner killed “several dozen” Ukrainian POWs who were lying injured in their trenches by “tossing grenades." “We would torture soldiers too, there weren’t any rules,” he claimed. “We sprayed them with our bullets,” said the Wagnerite, adding that he had no regrets, and that "it's a war, I don't regret a single thing, and if I could, I would go back."  His account was released by Gulagu.net rights group in an hour and 17 minute-long video. 

Another Wagner fighter, identified as Azamat Uldarov, said that mercenaries killed several dozens in one instance during the battle for Bakhmut. In the basement of a nine-floor block of flats in Bakhmut, Wagner mercenaries killed an entire group, including a young girl. 

“She was screaming, she was a little kid, she was five or six and I shot her, a kill shot. I wasn’t allowed to let anyone out, you understand?” Uldarov said in the interview footage. Several visuals of Russian soldiers apparently beheading Ukrainian prisoners of war have also emerged since the start of what Russia calls the "special military operation" in Ukraine. Yevgeny Nuzhin, a convicted murderer recruited by Wagner who surrendered to Ukrainian forces and was returned to Russia in a prisoner swap was brutally beheaded by a Wagner fighter on camera with a sledgehammer.

Wagner Group military company. Credit: AP

A Ukrainian soldier who was castrated with a knife described the brutal torture by Wagner as "worse than hell." The 28-year-old soldier, who requested anonymity, detailed the harrowing instances of sexual violence against men during the captivity. “Their dignity has been damaged so badly and it’s impossible to forget," psychologist Anzhelika Yatsenko, who has been treating the soldier who is suicidal from physical and mental damage, detailed in a report. Russians told them, ‘We are doing this so you can’t have kids' while one other more sadistic Russian soldier insisted that when he returns to the front line he must "be away from women”.

A barbaric footage on the pro-Russian accounts on Telegram showed the uniformed Ukrainian POW pinned down with his mouth gagged, and hands tied while a man in Russian camouflage appeared with bolt cutters and cuts of the POW's genitalia and threw the body part away. The footage in the Russian language warned "Ukrainian mothers not to send their sons to war," according to Kyiv Independent. Two Russian soldiers appear in the clip standing near a car with the capital letter Z as they torture the bloodied Ukrainian POW and kill him. “After the torture, he was shot dead and his body dragged through the streets on a rope,” Ukraine Watch said about the remaining part of the video which Republic Media Network and other major global outlets did not access. 

British soldier's 24-hour-long marathons of ABBA's 'Mamma Mia'

A former British Army soldier who was captured by PMC Wagner claimed that he was tortured mentally as Wagner mercenaries made him listen to "Mamma Mia" by ABBA on the loop—nonstop throughout the day. Shaun Pinner who served in the Royal Anglian Regiment, and came to Ukraine under a private military contractor claimed that he endured electrocution, stabbings, a fake execution, and was even prodded with a cattle prod. He was fed stale bread and tainted water while forced to sit through marathons of ABBA and the heavy metal band Slipknot playlist. Labelling his experience as "hell on Earth," the 48-year-old said after his return home that he "never wants to hear another ABBA song again." Pinner was taken prisoner in April during the siege of Mariupol.