MOSCOW, November 5. /TASS/. Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament) member Fyodor Venislavsky said that 14 people had been detained in a ‘torture chamber’ in the basement of a private house in the community of Petropavlovskaya Borshchagovka near Kiev, four of whom had health problems.
"There were not 40 servicemen there, but 14. Four of the servicemen had certain health problems," he told the Ukrainian Liga.net news outlet.
On November 2, Ukrainian media reported that armed men were holding around 40 people in the basement of a private house in a community near Kiev. An ambulance arrived at the scene, but armed men guarding the building refused to let the medical personnel inside. Clashes broke out outside the house, and local residents trying to force open the gate faced tear gas. Medics were allowed to take four people with signs of beatings to hospital only after the incident drew widespread attention in the media and on social media.
Police later said that the house was being used by Ukrainian National Guard servicemen. National Guard Commander Alexander Pivnenko said that the four injured men were servicemen who had left their unit without authorization. He described the house as a "temporary deployment site" and acknowledged that mobilized men were also being held there.
Mass protests erupted outside the house, after which the National Guard agreed to transfer all the detained men to a medical facility for examinations.