‘Some Panicked. But I Thought: “God, It is Not Yet Time.”’ The Story of Kherson Resident Ihor Kovtoniuk, who endured torture in captivity
Before the full-scale invasion, Ihor Kovtoniuk managed kitchens at Kherson restaurants and ran a summer business in Zaliznyi Port on the Black Sea.
When the occupation began, Kovtoniuk stayed in Kherson and took up volunteering. Alongside his colleagues, he provided food to hundreds of people in need.
In early September 2022, Ihor was captured. The occupiers tormented him in every conceivable way: beating him, stubbing out cigarettes on his skin, torturing him with water and electricity — all to extract any useful information. But Ihor had nothing to tell them.
In our conversation, Ihor revisits those harrowing days to recount his 45 days in captivity, the occupiers' game of “good” and “bad” cops, hours-long interrogations, inhumane torture, his miraculous release, and the threats to drown him in the Dnipro River if he ever returned to Kherson.
‘The city was helpless’
Ihor Kovtoniuk was born in Izmail, Odesa region. When he was six, his parents moved to Kherson with him. He studied culinary arts and started working as a chef after graduation. Sometimes, he worked as a cook in a ship’s galley. He visited Turkey, Greece, and Singapore with the crew.
Later, he launched a small seasonal business — food stands in Zaliznyi Port in the Kherson region. In Kherson, he helped a friend manage a restaurant. Summers were often spent by the sea, autumns in the forest, and from late autumn to spring, he practiced cold-water swimming. He was not particularly interested in politics: “Like most average people, I heard and saw bits and pieces but didn’t delve into it as perhaps I should have.”
On the evening of February 23, 2022, Ihor’s parents visited him. The family had dinner and went to bed, unaware of what the next day would bring. That morning — loud and alarming — would be etched in their memories forever, as it was for most Ukrainians.
“The night before, everyone was monitoring the news, but no one imagined this could actually happen,” Ihor admitted. “At five in the morning, we got a call saying explosions could be heard.”
Later, Ihor realized the noise was coming from Chornobaivka Airport, which the occupiers used to terrorize the Kherson region. His first move was to drive to a gas station, fill up the tank, and return home. Leaving the city wasn’t on his mind that first day.
“We had a large staff at the café,” Ihor recalls. “We decided to divide all the cash among the employees so they could at least have some money to start with. Another colleague and I started delivering the money to everyone. That’s how the day flew by.”
The next day, Ihor suggested his parents leave, but they refused. The family decided to stay — at least for the time being.
“In the first days of the full-scale war, the city was helpless,” Ihor remembers. “Chaos. Long lines at stores, gas stations, and pharmacies. People didn’t know what to do.”
At the time, many Kherson residents — including Ihor — still believed it would all last a couple of weeks, maybe a month at most. Unaware of the challenges ahead, he decided to help others.
One of the places he worked at, a small café, was located in a semi-basement. In the early days, staff, relatives, and acquaintances took shelter there. The café had some food supplies.
“Everyone who needed help came to eat and drink,” Ihor says. “We turned couches into beds and tables into barriers — back then, we thought this might protect us if things escalated.”
By early March, however, the Russians entered Kherson. That’s when Ihor’s parents told him that locals were planning a pro-Ukrainian rally. He shared the news with friends.
The first and only time Ihor had participated in street protests before this was during the Orange Revolution. The head of the company where his father worked supported Viktor Yushchenko. Ihor, then 16, went to Maidan and still remembers the spirit of unity. Little did he know that 18 years later, he and his parents would join rallies under vastly different circumstances.
Initially, pro-Ukrainian demonstrations were held daily. Protesters gathered around 10 or 11 a.m. in Freedom Square, the city’s central plaza. The Russians stood near the regional administration building, while the demonstrators gathered across the road, near the “Ukraina” cinema.
“At first, not everyone knew about these gatherings, but then more and more people joined,” Ihor recalls. “People came to show their clear stance and to get updates. If we stayed home and didn’t show our support for Ukraine, it would seem as though we accepted the occupiers’ stance. But we didn’t want that. It was powerful.”
Ihor participated in five or six rallies. But the occupiers’ initial feigned indifference to pro-Ukrainian demonstrations quickly turned into violence — they began using force against the protesters. That’s when Ihor stopped going to the square.
“At first, not everyone realized where this would lead. So people made posters, pinned Ukrainian flag ribbons to their jackets, and chanted things like ‘Putin – khuylo!’ and ‘Kherson is Ukraine,’” he recalls. “There was no aggression from the Russians at first. But then they started dispersing the crowds with tear gas and smoke grenades. That’s when the rallies dwindled.”
‘We fed 250 people every day’
During the occupation, Ihor recalls, Kherson seemed to regress to the lawlessness of the 1990s. Impunity encouraged crime. Looting began — stores and ATMs were emptied, not only by Russians but also by some locals. Streets were filled with intoxicated people.
Meanwhile, Ihor moved to a friend’s house in the city center with a large basement. During the first month of the occupation, 16-17 people lived there, including young adults, the elderly, and children.
“When tensions rose, thoughts would creep in like, ‘Maybe we should leave?’ But when things calmed down, it was, ‘We’ll stay at home,’” Ihor says. “I have a private house. We’d just finished renovating it before the full-scale war. It might sound irrational, but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving it all behind. If I had even a 5% understanding of what this could lead to, of course, I would have left.”
Together with his colleagues, Ihor began volunteering. They helped everyone in need, prioritizing women and the elderly.
“Some people left Kherson, abandoning their parents or wives, and we helped the latter,” Kovtoniuk explains. “We had supplies at our café, and we delivered food to schools, maternity wards, field kitchens, and bakeries. Then we started cooking in the café where we worked, feeding 250 people daily in the KhBK neighborhood. Elderly men and women would show up as early as 5 a.m.”
At that time, Ihor recalls, Kherson was filled with a mix of ethnicities rarely seen in the city, representing the diverse makeup of the occupying army. Some of them didn’t even speak Russian. Among the invaders, there were also those who seemed trapped in a distant past.
"Once, I was driving, and at a checkpoint, I showed my Diia app,” Ihor recalls. “The guy asked, ‘Where’s your passport?’ I said, ‘This is our passport.’ He replied, ‘This isn’t a passport. Where’s the little book?’”
The Russians tried distributing humanitarian aid, but initially, almost no one accepted it. Only later, Ihor says, when people had no other choice, did some begin to take it.
“Their ‘reports’ about ‘thousands’ of people coming for aid were laughable. We saw the truth—20 or 30 people at most,” he says. “Later, in late spring and early summer, when people’s financial situations worsened, more started taking their humanitarian aid.”
The volunteers constantly worried that one day the occupiers would “visit” their kitchen. Luckily, that never happened, though the danger was always close by.
"Once, I was driving back from the market with a trunk full of vegetables and meat,” the volunteer remembers. “At a checkpoint, they stopped me and asked why I had so much food. I explained that we were helping people. They said, ‘That can’t be! We’ve heard that you young Ukrops steal money and gold from the elderly, robbing them — you don’t help; you only make things worse.’ I replied, ‘I’m the first Ukrainian doing the exact opposite.’”
It seemed like Ihor was no longer in immediate danger. But it turned out the worst was yet to come.
‘They shoved me into a van, and that’s how I learned what “Russian world” really is.’
On September 8, Ihor was driving down Luhova Street near his house when a minibus suddenly blocked his path. Two men in civilian clothes got out. When Ihor tried to start his car, special forces officers jumped out of the van wearing helmets, headsets, and bulletproof vests, aiming their weapons at him.
“I realized it was best not to resist. I opened the door, and they dragged me out, threw me on the ground, put a plastic bag over my head, tied my hands behind my back with zip ties, shoved me into the van, and that’s how I learned what ‘Russian world’ really is,” Ihor recalls.
“In the van, I was in a state of shock — a mix of despair, confusion, and disbelief. During the ride, they mentioned the name of one of my neighbors. I knew many people with that name, so I didn’t understand who they were referring to until much later.”
It turned out that Ihor’s neighbor was the one who had gotten him detained. In early September, the neighbor had boasted about his patriotism in the company of unfamiliar girls, who most likely passed the information to the occupiers. A day or two later, the neighbor was arrested. To shift the focus away from himself, he implicated acquaintances, including Ihor, who was detained a week later.
“My neighbor, drunk, told those girls that he was a ‘fighter for Ukraine,’ that there were many like him, and that they were figuring out ways to help the Ukrainian army,” Ihor explains. “When he was detained, to deflect aggression away from himself, he pointed fingers at innocent people, claiming they had weapons caches and were drug addicts or alcoholics. I used to think we had similar views, but it turned out I was wrong. A decent person wouldn’t slander their people to save their own skin.”
The ride to the destination took five to seven minutes. Although Ihor couldn’t see where they were going, he initially sensed the direction:
“We headed toward the city center. But then they started making random turns, and I ‘lost my bearings.’”
‘When they increased the voltage, I bit my tongue’
The captors brought Ihor to an old Soviet-era building on Pylypa Orlyka Street, which had recently been repurposed as a business center.
For two and a half days, Ihor was held in the basement of the building, which had been turned into a makeshift prison cell. It was something akin to a boiler room, with a massive crane in the middle and numerous pipes around. The captors handcuffed him to one of these pipes.
Ihor wasn’t alone in the basement; he shared it with Yevhen, who had been captured earlier. A father of four, Yevhen was also accused of fabricated charges by the occupiers. When Ihor talks about his cellmate, tears well up in his eyes. The fate of Yevhen remains unknown.
“Yevhen is an incredible guy,” Ihor says. “He ended up there because of a relative, who was from the ‘authorities’ and had hidden weapons in Yevhen’s garage. The Russians were searching garages and found them. In the first few days, I wasn’t given any food. Yevhen got some but wasn’t allowed to share it with me. I wasn’t even permitted to drink water, but he managed to sneak some to me. For two and a half days, he kept me going emotionally.”
Ihor was held at the business center from September 8 to September 10, before being transferred to a temporary detention facility (ITT) on Teploenerhetykiv Street on the city's outskirts. Compared to the basement on Orlyka Street, Ihor says, the conditions there were significantly better.
“At the ITT, it was like a ‘luxury suite,’ a ‘resort,’” Ihor says with a bitter smile. “There was running water, lights, spoons, forks, mattresses, a toilet, and meals were brought in. When I arrived, the guys there gave me a toothbrush. The cell was meant for four people, but there were usually six or seven of us. The group was a mix — ranging from officials to drug dealers. There was no one directly involved in the war.”
Despite this, Ihor was repeatedly taken back to the business center for interrogations. These sessions began within hours of his initial capture and were accompanied by constant abuse.
During interrogations, Ihor was always made to sit with his head lowered, his face obscured by a hat or a bag. As a result, when law enforcement officers later showed him photos of potential perpetrators, he couldn’t identify any of them. He remembers only a few details of the interior: worn linoleum and cheap, utilitarian furniture.
“There was natural light in the room, so I think it was on an upper floor where the screams wouldn’t be heard from the street,” he speculates. “When I was captured, everyone said, ‘Survive the first week; it’ll get easier after that.’ But for some reason, I was constantly tortured for 16 or 17 days. The first week, they interrogated me daily; after that, every other day.”
Ihor recalls that his interrogators ranged from young men to “older, more serious” ones. Most of the “young” ones were from the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The “older” ones, however, spoke with a distinct Russian accent. The younger interrogators were the ones who “prepared” him — beating him, humiliating him, extinguishing cigarettes on his skin, and employing a variety of cruel methods.
“For example, they would make me guess the flavor of an IQOS stick,” Ihor recalls. “I’d be lying on the floor, with my hands and feet pinned so I couldn’t move. They’d put a gas mask on me, cut off the air supply, and then pump IQOS or e-cigarette vapor through a hose they called the ‘elephant.’ I’d start choking, and they’d ask, ‘What flavor is it? Guess!’ Sometimes, they’d pull off my sock, stuff it in my mouth, and pour water over me until I lost consciousness.”
Ihor pauses briefly, catching his breath before continuing:
“They tortured me with electricity. First, they’d ‘prepare’ me with a stun gun. Then they’d pour water over me and attach wires to my pinky fingers, ears, tongue, and genitals. Then they’d turn on the current and ‘play’ with it. The pain was unbearable — you could lose consciousness. At its peak, I’d rip off the restraints and try to stand up. When they increased the voltage, my body didn’t know how to react, and I’d end up biting my tongue. Once, I blacked out and woke up later with a through-hole on my left leg. I still don’t know how it happened.”
“I was lucky — I managed to recover on my own. But some of the guys I was with — this I saw with my own eyes — stopped breathing. That’s when the occupiers would call in their medical staff, who’d use ammonia to revive them.”
Toward the end of the interrogations, Ihor recalls, when he was “on his last legs,” the “older” interrogators would enter the room. He assumes they didn’t want to dirty their hands.
“They’d try to play the ‘good cops.’ Before them, it was all ‘bad cops,’ and now they’d talk without violence: ‘Here, have a cigarette, drink some sweet fizzy water, eat a cookie,’” Ihor recounts. “They’d say, ‘Stop lying,’ and ask, ‘Who’s in charge? Where are the weapons caches? Who’s funding the sabotage groups in Kherson? Who’s part of them?’ They’d list names and ask, ‘Do you know this person?’ I recognized some — they were all local guys from Kherson, from the Territorial Defense or ultras groups. Then they started accusing me of using volunteer work as a cover to fund sabotage groups. Absolute nonsense.”
The goal of the interrogations and torture was to extract any kind of information.
“I told them, ‘Just tell me what to say. I’ll say it.’ I had nothing to share. But they didn’t believe me.”
Ihor’s cellmates said his interrogations lasted three to four hours each time. However, to him, it felt like the torture went on for entire days.
“Because I constantly bit my tongue, I couldn’t speak and could only consume liquids,” he explains. “They beat my kidneys so badly that my legs swelled up. After interrogations, they’d carry me back to the cell. The guys would lay me under the bunk and prop my legs up on a pile of clothes so the swelling would go down by morning.”
Ihor considers his torturers to be “underdeveloped people,” likely driven by past grievances and using their power to vent their anger. He cites an example to illustrate this.
“In the early days, they’d call me ‘fat Ukrainian lard,’” recalls Ihor, who weighed about 100 kilograms at the time. “Once, they took me somewhere to show them locations. They let me lift my hat or bag — I don’t remember which — to see the area. I saw two of them were just ‘fat pigs,’ probably 150 kilos each. One was carrying my bag, which they’d confiscated during my arrest.”
While in captivity, the prisoners lived in an information vacuum, which the occupiers exploited to the fullest.
“They kept insisting that Mykolaiv and Odesa had been captured, that their forces were advancing toward Kyiv through Uman, and that Ukraine would soon cease to exist,” Ihor recalls. “They’d say, ‘You’d better cooperate—you’ll be doing your own people a favor.’”
However, when new detainees were brought into the detention center, they shared news from the outside. That’s how the prisoners learned that Russian forces had been driven out of most of the Kharkiv region and that several collaborators had been killed in Kherson.
“And when we heard our troops blew up the Antonivskyi Bridge, we jumped for joy as if we’d been the ones who did it,” Ihor says with a smile.
‘They gave us water and said they were taking us to be executed’
Ihor spent 20 to 23 days in the temporary detention facility. In early October, he was sent back to the basement of the business center. Yevhen was no longer there. Ihor remained imprisoned for another 20 days.
“In the basement, time felt frozen: you slept on the floor, in the cold, ate raw buckwheat every day, weren’t given water, and used a bottle as a toilet,” Ihor recounts. “For all 20 days, I barely slept, just stared at the ceiling. I was there with three young guys, aged 18 to 20, who had simply filmed a missile strike and uploaded it online.”
By late October, it had grown very cold. The captors brought in old mattresses, blankets, and clothing, saying the prisoners would be wintering in the basement. Each of them picked out their winter clothes and prepared a bunk. But suddenly, the captors stopped feeding them — no food or water for three days. They also turned off the surveillance cameras.
“I thought they either planned to kill us or something big was happening,” Ihor explains. “Day and night, trucks were coming and going, loading and unloading things. Later, piecing it all together, I realized they were preparing to leave. After three days, they came to us and asked how we were doing. We said we were thirsty. They gave us water and said they were taking us to be executed.”
The occupiers opened all the cells and escorted 23 to 26 prisoners out. They covered their heads with hats or bags and tied their hands behind their backs with tape. They threw firecrackers at them and reloaded their rifles before loading the detainees into a vehicle.
“They drove us in what I think was a prisoner transport vehicle — it was loud and tall,” Ihor speculates. “We realized they were taking us to the Komyshanske Cemetery. Some people started crying.”
However, the captors drove past the cemetery and stopped in a field between Bilozerka and the Stanislav Canyon. The prisoners were led out into the field, surrounded by vineyards and apple orchards.
“They lined us up on our knees and started pulling us out one by one,” Ihor recalls. “They handed each of us a sign — I don’t know what was written on it — and everyone had to state their name, surname, date of birth, and say, ‘I’m okay.’ After filming us all, they reloaded their weapons again. We thought it was the end.”
Fortunately, the worst didn’t happen. The occupiers stood there for a few more minutes before ordering those who had agreed to collaborate and had assignments in Mykolaiv to “go that way,” and told the rest to also head toward Mykolaiv, saying, “Go live there.” Before leaving, they issued a chilling warning:
“If we see you in Kherson again, we’ll feed you to the fish in the Dnipro.”
‘Wearing slippers and a woman’s sweater, unwashed for 40 days’
The first thing Ihor thought of upon being freed was hunger — he and the other prisoners hadn’t eaten in three days. They began picking apples, but most of the harvest had already been collected, leaving only sour and rotten ones. Still, the prisoners were grateful for anything.
The occupiers had scattered the prisoners’ documents on the ground, and everyone scrambled to find their own. Ihor, however, couldn’t find his. Then they faced the challenge of getting back to Kherson, about 10 kilometers away. The group split up.
“I went with an older man, Grandpa Misha, toward Kizomys because he said he knew a fortune teller there,” Ihor explains. “It was late autumn, and I was wearing slippers and socks, a long T-shirt, and a woman’s sweater. We hadn’t washed in 40 days — unshaven, dirty. When we arrived, the fortune teller wasn’t there, but a relative of hers helped us, letting us into a nearby empty house.”
For the first 20 days, while Ihor was in the detention facility, his family knew where he was from fellow prisoners who had been released. But in the basement, he disappeared without a trace. After reaching “civilization,” Ihor’s first call was to his girlfriend. Meanwhile, the locals gave the freed prisoners clothes and hygiene products.
“I trimmed Grandpa Misha’s hair, and he trimmed mine. We shaved and cleaned up,” Ihor says with a smile. “It was like a scene from a movie — two ex-cons holed up in a country house, trying to get their lives in order. We were those ‘ex-cons.’”
The road from Kizomys to Kherson was dotted with Russian checkpoints. Ihor’s family and friends brainstormed ways to extract him from the occupied village. Eventually, they came up with a “cover story.”
“A friend of mine owns a small bakery and a bread delivery truck,” Ihor says. “We made up a story that I was their employee and had forgotten my documents at home. The bread truck came to pick me up. By then, I was clean and smelled good. I climbed in, and we made it home.”
When asked about reuniting with his family, Ihor pauses. Finally, he can’t hold back his tears.
“It was a good reunion,” he says after a moment of silence.
‘This experience will never completely fade’
On his way back to Kherson, Ihor didn’t yet realize that Ukrainian flags would soon fly over the city again. There were no outward signs of it: the surrounding villages were still under occupation, and Russian checkpoints lined the roads.
Since the Russians had forbidden Ihor from returning to Kherson, once he got home, he stayed indoors for a long time, fearing they might spot him.
In the days leading up to November 11, 2022 — a date now sacred to the people of Kherson — there was no communication in the city. A friend of Ihor’s came to visit and suggested driving around town, saying there weren’t many Russians left.
“The next day, he came back and said, ‘Our guys are in the city.’ I said, ‘No way, how could that be?’ And he replied, ‘It’s true. Trust me!’ So, we drove to the market in the KhBK neighborhood. There, we ran into another friend I’d been imprisoned with,” Ihor recalls. “The market was already buzzing with rumors that our troops were in the city. People had started celebrating, drinking, and partying. Then we finally saw our guys. I didn’t go to Freedom Square to greet the Armed Forces of Ukraine — I was too afraid. Maybe I should have, but after what I’d been through, I decided not to.”
Now, Ihor lives in Odesa. He works and supports the military while slowly rebuilding his mental health. However, the events he endured will stay with him forever.
“At first, I was closed off. I didn’t want to work with a psychologist — I thought I could handle it on my own,” he says. “Now, I sometimes talk to a psychologist, take sedatives, and try to recover. This experience will never go away completely. But you have to pull yourself together as much as possible and help those around you. I keep in touch with the guys I was imprisoned with. We meet, talk, and support each other. When we were being taken to what they said was an execution, some people panicked. But I thought, ‘God, It is not yet time.’ You always have to believe in better days ahead.”
