MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. The Kiev regime panicked after information came out about a secret torture chamber in the suburbs of Kiev, and tried to hush up the incident, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"And, of course, they panicked, brought in police, and tried to hush up what was, in a sense, a shameful incident for them," she told a news briefing.

On November 2, a new illegal torture prison was discovered in the basement of a private house in the village of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka near Kiev, where perpetrators from the first corps of the National Guard of Ukraine (Azov is recognized as a terrorist organization and is banned in Russia) tortured dozens of men, including minors.

According to Zakharova, some of them were apparently used as "material for practicing sadistic Bandera-style command techniques. It’s just, you know, like a kind of boxing training ground for the guards.

"By the way, the Azovites have long and widely practiced creating such torture chambers to torment Russians and Ukrainians. Anyone who falls within their grasp. Do you think I’m exaggerating? Oh, no. I’ll repeat what the Ukrainian leadership and officials have said about this - including head of Zelensky’s office Kirill Budanov (listed in Russia as a terrorist and extremist), who said: ‘Well, is this the first time? Is this the only such center? There are many of them.’ There are indeed many of them. Because Zelensky’s power is built on such torture chambers. Only on them and nothing else."

Zakharova pointed out that the organizers and owners of these torture chambers demonstrated their bestial tendencies in Donbass, mainly in Mariupol, starting in 2014. "It’s enough to recall the infamous torture basement called ‘Library,’" she continued.

On the evening of November 2, Ukrainian media reported that armed men were holding about 40 men in the basement of a private house near Kiev. An ambulance arrived at the scene; a medical worker said she had received a video showing that some of the people in the basement were in critical condition, and many had injuries indicating torture. However, the building’s security guards would not allow the medics inside. Scuffles broke out near the house, and when outraged local residents tried to break down the gates, tear gas was used against them. Only after the ambulance service received widespread publicity was it allowed to take four people with signs of beatings away; one of them was in serious condition. Later, the police said the house was housing military personnel of the National Guard, and its commander Aleksandr Pivnenko said that the four men with injuries were military personnel who had fled from their units. He described the house as a "temporary deployment point" and acknowledged that mobilized individuals were also being held on its premises.