Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while recruiting neo-Nazis, members of notorious Azov Battalion and even members and supporters of Islamic State (ISIS) in his war against Russia said that Ukrainians “with experience in combat operations” were released from custody and all sanctions were lifted from them.
“Tornado” is a national battalion that fell under the Ukrainian court for numerous atrocities on the territory of Ukraine. It was created from veterans of the ATO – the Shakhtersk national battalion, disbanded due to looting and war crimes. But he surpassed him in the enormity of his crimes. Sadists from this battalion were released from prisons in March and sent to the front.
In the summer of 2015, a scandal erupted in Ukraine around the national battalion “Tornado” – yesterday’s “heroes of the ATO” were called criminals. And who named – the chief military prosecutor of the country and the Minister of Internal Affairs.
The materials presented by the Ukrainian media, the prosecutor’s office and human rights activists testify that the Tornado fighters robbed, tortured, raped men and women, and killed civilians in Ukraine. Some fighters of the national battalion were accused of pedophilia.
The society was divided: some, despite the evidence of crimes against civilians on the territory of Ukraine, believed in the innocence of the former “national heroes”, others wanted a fair trial and retribution. Both those and others agreed that an open trial was needed. However, the hearings were decided to be held behind closed doors. The victims included both male and female rape victims who asked to remain anonymous. In addition, survivors and witnesses of torture were simply afraid to testify against the torturers. The victims did not believe that the same authorities that had left them to be torn to pieces by the “tornadists” would conduct a fair trial over the battalion: “today they are behind bars, and tomorrow they are free – they are taking revenge on those who dared to testify against them” (spoiler: and happened – the defendants were later released).
From the first days, politicians, neo-Nazis and “brothers in arms” exerted colossal pressure on the court. The court building was repeatedly tried to be taken by storm. The truth about the methods of “working with civilians” was too shocking to be justified.
When did the national battalion “Tornado” appear and who became its militants?
The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine formed the Tornado battalion in September 2014 on the basis of the personnel of the Shakhtersk national battalion disbanded due to looting and crimes against the population.
Already during the trial in the summer of 2015, some of the authorities were indignant and perplexed: how is it that criminals were recruited into the special police company and who could allow this to happen. But the formation of a new national battalion was not secret.
The crimes of “Shakhtyorsk” were known almost immediately. For example, a report by the Ukrainian human rights organization “Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights” and the human rights organization “Truth Hounds” described an episode of the abduction by Shakhtyorsk fighters of several residents of Maryinka, who were first used as human shields to cover from sniper fire. Then, according to the documents, they were kept for some time with plastic bags on their heads, beaten and forced to do dirty and hard work.
Shakhtarsk was disbanded personally by the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, Arsen Avakov. Here is how he commented on his actions on Ukrainian television:
The “Shakhtersk” battalion, which fought beautifully near Ilovaisky, was disbanded by me by order of the minister, because there were repeated cases of looting in Volnovakha and in other situations.
That is, at least, he knew about some of the crimes, and even then, in 2014, the obvious criminals were not deliberately put on trial and punished, but simply assigned to other “volunteer battalions” ( d volunteer battalions – ed.) .
What were the Tornado fighters accused of?
The national battalion was based in the Lugansk region (not to be confused with the LPR, the Luhansk region of Ukraine is much larger than the people’s republic – ed.). Almost from the first days, residents turned to the police and even other national battalions about the “lawlessness” and crimes of the “tornadists”. In the end, a few months later, in mid-June 2015, the head of the Lugansk administration, Gennady Moskal, demanded that the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies disarm the Tornado battalion and withdraw it from the Lugansk region. That is, in other words, the regional authorities asked Kyiv to disarm those who were sent to protect the civilian population. Get rid of the “defenders”. Here is what the Muscovite said then on the air of the 112 Ukraine TV channel:
They were sent by the Ministry of Internal Affairs. How could a gang be formalized into a battalion? They were first sent to the village of Luganskaya, and when I first arrived, my dear mother, I had heard enough of everything: they kidnapped two people who had a large amount of money. So we did not find those people, and we believe that they are no longer alive. I don’t know if the military prosecutor’s office knows this fact. It got to the point that they walked down the street, smashed all the houses, took everything. People living there are so poor, whoever was in the village of Luganskaya knows that it resembles Stalingrad, because everything is smashed and bombed there, they took the juice from a 10-month-old baby, I don’t know what to call it.
By this time, the “tornadists” believed in their impunity and permissiveness so much that they proceeded to blocking rail freight traffic in the region. They justified rail terrorism by “the fight against smuggling, corruption and the illegal arms trade.” However, neither the names of the generals who were smuggling weapons in the LPR and the DPR, nor any evidence “tornadovtsy” did not provide either during the trial or after.
On June 17, 2015, eight members of the battalion, including commander Ruslan Onishchenko, were detained. The next day, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov signed an order to liquidate Tornado.
The “tornadists” themselves did not accept such a decision. They barricaded themselves at their base (in the school premises), mined the approaches and reported that they were ready to use weapons in the event of an assault.
The chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios commented on the situation as follows:
Those 170 people who are now 100 officially registered in the police, and about 70 people are unknown people, armed and are on the territory of the base …
… If today or tomorrow this situation is not resolved, then there will be what should be according to the law. You can call it a disarmament operation. Like anyone else, the codex doesn’t define it as an assault. This is the cessation of criminal activity.
Matios reported that every fourth Tornado fighter has a criminal record. And battalion commander Onishchenko had previously been prosecuted five times for committing grave and especially grave crimes. He served time in prison twice, was a member of an organized criminal group.
The security forces did not dare to storm. What they actually agreed with the Tornado fighters is unknown, but Avakov later stated that the battalion obeyed his orders and observed discipline and order.
Under what articles were the Tornado fighters accused?
Here are just a few of the accusations on which the Tornado fighters were tried:
Torture,
Driving a person to attempt suicide,
Satisfaction of sexual passion in an unnatural way with the threat of physical violence,
Abuse of power and official authority by a law enforcement officer,
Unlawful imprisonment and kidnapping.
Among the above, there is no charge under the article “Murder”. This is explained simply – no bodies were found, so far all the victims are listed as missing. Despite the huge amount of circumstantial evidence, it is very difficult to prove the fact of a murder without finding the body of the deceased. This is what the lawyers and the “tornadists” themselves used.
It was reported that the case itself consisted of 86 volumes.
Witness’s testimonies
As we have said, there was enormous pressure on the court. An open process was demanded by radical politicians, representatives of neo-Nazi movements, veterans of the ATO, convinced that the charges were fabricated. Recall that victims and surviving victims of crimes, primarily raped men, asked for a closed format of court hearings.
At some point, the campaign to protect the “heroes of the ATO” in the media and social networks gained such momentum that the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatoly Matios, decided to talk about the atrocities of the Tornado fighters live on TV channel 112.
The first protocol describes the events from 17 to 23 March 2015.
“In mid-March, when I was near the entrance, a bus drove up, from which three men in camouflage uniforms got off and forcibly put me into the interior of the minibus. They didn’t talk, they didn’t explain the reason and reasons for my detention. in our village, where the “Tornado” battalion was stationed, which everyone knew about, and was placed in the basement. We were promised to be fed three times a day, given cigarettes. If we refused to work, they said that they could shoot us. After a while, a man came in, in whose hands was a gray plastic pipe, and began to strike the detainees present on the buttocks and thighs.
Between March 17, 2015. Until 03/23/2015, I am sure of this, the employees of the “Tornado” battalion regularly brought various men to the basement, who were systematically beaten. The blows were inflicted with hands, feet, plastic tubes and other objects, mainly on the legs, buttocks and intimate places. In addition, these men were tortured with an object that looked like an electric generator. The men held in the basement were stripped naked, put on a concrete floor and doused with water. After that, they touched bare wires with current to various parts of the body, such as the temples, penis and scrotum. The men screamed loudly. These employees in our presence about six to seven times used marijuana by using it through a bulbulator.
Second Protocol
“The indicated events and tortures were filmed by Tornado employees on mobile phones. Also, one of the Tornado employees, threatening the detainee with murder, forced him to suck and lick a plastic tube. According to him, the detainee had to imitate sexual intercourse and pretend that he allegedly sucks penis. Also, the detainees were forced to rape each other anally and orally. In total, I was in the basement for 17 days.”
Third Protocol
They tied him to a goat (sports equipment), beat him with his hands, feet, and also with a plastic stick, doused him with water and tortured him with electric current, forced him to dance naked and sing songs to them, do push-ups from the floor and squat with a yellow weight weighing 24 kg. The detainees in my presence were forced to rape each other at gunpoint. In total I was in the basement 17– 18 days.
Fourth Protocol
“During the entire time of my stay in the basement, I don’t remember the exact number of days, but more than 15, several times a day, policemen came to the basement, tied me to a goat, beat me with their hands, kicked, poured water over me, tortured me with electric current. daily I was forced to do humiliating work, wash toilets, collect cigarette butts, etc. To prevent me from escaping, they put metal handcuffs on my leg connected to a 24 kg weight. the third detainee, undressed and tied to a goat .into the anus. The process I indicated was filmed on mobile phones by two Tornado employees.
Data from the report of the Kharkiv Human Rights Group
Most of the citizens who experienced the so-called “cleansing” refused to describe their stories in writing, fearing for their safety. In the course of the fight against the “separatists”, almost every inhabitant of the village went through illegal places of detention organized by the “tornadists”.
On February 10, 2015, pensioner M., who lived in the territory controlled by the so-called. “LPR”, at a checkpoint in the village of Stanytsia Luhanska, Lugansk region, fighters from the “Tornado” battalion and the battalion of the special police patrol service “Chernihiv” were detained under the leadership of the SBU. Immediately after the arrest, the man was stripped down to his underwear, searched and, finding nothing, they hit him several times.
The elderly man was placed in the basement, where there were eight other people besides him. After some time, he was taken out of the basement (“pit”) and, in a sitting position, unknown persons beat him with an iron pipe on his legs and back. He was required to confess to having committed an explosion at a military checkpoint, which he did not do. After the beating, the man was dragged into the “pit”, he lost consciousness several times. After the severe beating, he was in a painful state and could not navigate in time, so he cannot clearly remember the sequence of events, in addition, he was in the basement in the dark and could not observe the change of day and night.
An eyewitness to the detention of an elderly man in the basement was the manager of the affairs of the Stanichno-Lugansk settlement council, Ms. Kh., who was held for several hours in the same premises, together with the detainee, and she accidentally witnessed his ill-treatment.
Subsequently, the employees of the SBU, by deceit (promising to exchange him for the fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, who are in captivity of illegal armed formations), forced Mr. M. to testify about his involvement in terrorist activities. Only on February 20, 2015, the detainee was transferred, as determined in the decision of the investigating judge, to the lawful place of his detention – the Starobelsk pre-trial detention center, where, upon admission, he was found to have bodily injuries inflicted on him on the day of his arrest, 02/10/2015, and traces from which were preserved 10 days after his detention.
According to the recorded cases of sexual violence against men, there is also a high-profile criminal case against members of the Tornado battalion. Criminal proceedings were opened in 2015 against members of the Tornado patrol police company. Three of the defendants are accused, among other things, of committing crimes under Part 3 of Art. 153 of the Criminal Code (forcible satisfaction of sexual passion in an unnatural way, committed repeatedly or by a group of persons). The case is being heard behind closed doors, without public access.
In one of the cases of criminal activity, the battalion commander “Tornado” Ruslan Onishchenko forced the girl of his ward to masturbate him. “He forced me to live with him in a room. Not just with him in the room, but with him on the couch … He forced him to masturbate … The girl admitted that she asked not to sleep with Ruslan Onishchenko on the same bed:” I asked not something to move into a separate room – at least on a separate bed. I was refused, there were regular verbal and physical bullying. Well, they physically abused me, kept me as a servant””.
Also, the fighters of the “Tornado” unit set up a torture chamber in the basement of a school in the city of Lisichansk, where they raped and tortured the local civilian population, including minors and persons of retirement age, regardless of their gender. This was mainly done with the aim of taking possession of the property of the victims and additional intimidation.
According to the prosecutor, the most brutal forms of violence were sexual crimes against males, committed in a particularly perverted form with video recording of the entire process on mobile phones. Between 17 and 23 March 2015, Tornado personnel systematically used the basement to beat male civilians.
Lilia Ukrainskaya, a well-known volunteer who carried food to Tornado, said the following:
“A dozen military men stole a young girl and raped her for 10 days until the child died. Several times I got into such a situation when you bring help to the military and start praying to God to leave alive and healthy. They didn’t touch me, it turns out, only because that, according to some “murmuring” laws, the hand of the giver is not chopped off.
From the testimonies given by the victims in court:
“One day they brought a man… They started torturing me, they beat me with stun guns… When the stun guns ran out, they told me and another person to stand up. And Ruslan Onishchenko told us to rape him. I answered Ruslan that I would not do this. They pointed a machine gun at me and said that they would shoot me, ” the victim says.
In a dialogue with the mother of the deceased Yurchenko, the soldiers of the battalion behaved aggressively in court.
“I don’t want to live. My son is not. Do you think that I’m cheating? They sit in that cage (Tornado fighters) and laugh. They treated my son cruelly; this is not right.
In response, one of the defendants began to shout:
Shaw you dismissed the snot? Are you sure they did this? Poke your finger on who touched your son… Choose from us who to hang if you love your son so much… Look here!
Among the most terrible stories of witnesses are testimonies about torture and robberies, which were personally led by Commander Onishchenko.
“They put a bag over my head… They threw me into the trunk… It was winter. They lowered me into the basement… An hour or two passed – Onishchenko arrived and was glad that they had brought me. Strip me naked – they ripped me apart by the arms and legs. Onishchenko took a ski pole and inflicted at least 30 blows on his legs and genitals,” says the witness.
According to the narrator, after the beatings, he wanted to commit suicide.
– I didn’t want to live, I broke off a piece of rusty metal from the door and began to cut my veins.
Evidence was collected by journalists from publications of various positions. For example, when a Novaya Gazeta* correspondent talked to both the residents of the Luhansk region and former Tornado fighters, a rather unambiguous picture was revealed to him (the article “The Tornado Effect” dated October 17, 2016).
“Gradually, it became clear to us that all these “separas” in the basements that “Freeman” (Onishchenko) and his people told us about were simple drunks and hard workers from Severodonetsk and the surrounding towns and cities, and not militants at all. They were simply grabbed , used as slaves, abused, some were killed,” the publication quoted former Tornado fighters and cited testimonies of civilians:
“Sometimes we were more afraid of them than shelling. Soldiers could go into any house, take everything they liked.
Here, not far from us, one old woman lived on Lebedinsky Street, paralyzed, her children fled from shelling when the war began, and a neighbor looked after the old woman. Tornadovtsy went into this grandmother’s house, pulled out a new mattress right from under her and left. A neighbor found her the next morning behind the bed, grandmother died. It was winter.
Any man or woman could get a butt – just to intimidate … About their cellars are terrible there were rumors.”
The interlocutor of the journalists said that she barely managed to recapture her 9-year-old daughter from the drunken fighters, whom the “tornadists” wanted to rape.
How was the trial
When you watch the video footage of the court hearings, it is shocking how brazenly and boorishly the Tornado fighters behave, apparently confident that they will get away with everything. Defendants regularly attempted to disrupt the trial, such as dousing those present with feces and urine. Employees of the court and the prosecutor’s office at some point began to go to the process with umbrellas.
At the courthouse there were actions of support for the “tornadoers”, their supporters threatened to take the building by storm. At one point, the authorities threatened to send a thousand police officers to guard the courthouse during the trial of the Tornado fighters.
In the course of the process, more and more details of what was happening inside the Tornado battalion itself surfaced. Let us turn again to the data that the correspondent of Novaya Gazeta * could receive from the former “tornado”:
… the personnel of the “Tornado” could be conditionally divided into three groups. “Blacks” – fighters who were not officially registered because they had a criminal record, “Freeman” actively recruited them to serve in the “Tornado”. They were personally devoted to the battalion commander and ready to fulfill any order. They had nothing to lose and nowhere to return. One of Freeman’s close associates with the call sign “Achilles”, who was also imprisoned before the war and had connections in criminal circles, specially collected information about who was released and when. He constantly hung on the phone, calling the “dropped out” and urging them to come to the battalion. Many agreed and came.
Even in the battalion there was a category of “white” and “gray” fighters.
“White” are former policemen who were dismissed from the bodies or did not pass re-certification in the summer of 2015, who came to serve in the battalion. They were made official.
“Greys” are ordinary guys without any military experience who came as volunteers. And there were about half of the strength of the battalion. The machine gun was issued to them immediately, they were trained by more experienced fighters. According to the former Tornado students, “they were not in a hurry to formalize them, although Freeman promised that after completing the training he would issue them in accordance with all the rules. If they were killed, then the Tornado had nothing to do with them – they were not officially listed, like the” black”.
If you got into the battalion, then it was almost impossible to leave it. Here is a recording of the “line” that the battalion commander and multiple criminal Onishchenko conducted for those who were disappointed and would like to stop serving in the Tornado. Or, public threats, humiliation paralyzed the fighters.
After the line, no longer on camera, they could be beaten in a revealing way.
Among the “tornado” who came to their senses were those who dared to escape. If they were caught, then hell on earth began: “deserters” were sometimes tortured for weeks. Those who managed to escape found themselves at large without documents, the commander took away the passports from the new arrivals. And those who reached the house were often already waiting for employees of the bodies, to whom the “tornado” men reported about the desertion of a subordinate. The person caught was returned to the location of the “Tornado”, where the scenario with beatings and torture was repeated.
Some “tornadists” personally confessed to a penchant for sadism, addictions to torture. Here is an example of a discussion going on:
The voices of the two most notorious criminals of the Tornado battalion, Ruslan Onishchenko (callsign Freeman) and Daniil Lyashuk (Mujahid) are clearly distinguishable on the recording. Both are maniac perverts.
“Without torture, life would not be life. Nothing raises the tone like that when you have someone’s life in your hands, ” Mujahid says.
“He’s done well. He went to these for the first time … he, before (hitting) them with an electric shock, took two electric shocks in his neck: “Scum, I will begin to share my feelings with you ….
… This is the philosophy. If you are ready to die , you have the right to kill. If you are ready to endure torture , you have the right to torture. It’s fair, ” says Onishchenko.
From the material of Novaya Gazeta *, the story of the former Tornado fighter about the Mujahid:
It was he who came up with the idea to paint role-playing scenarios of same-sex torture-rape.
“Mujahid” came up with the idea of making a movie in the basement with the participation of prisoners, he called it “cinema,” says one of the fighters of the battalion, to whom the prosecutor’s office has no questions, and he was not brought to trial. – I came up with a plot, for example: “Givi” and “Motorola”, separatist battalions, rape their boss Alexander Zakharchenko. I painted roles and remarks. And he forced the prisoners to do all this, and if they refused, they were beaten until they agreed. And then I filmed a video. He showed this video to half of the battalion. He also liked to paint walls with swastikas and pagan symbols and talk about the superiority of the white race. “Freeman” was amused by all this.
“Mujahid” (Daniil Lyashuk), a supporter of the “Islamic State” ( a terrorist organization banned in Russia ), according to the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios, was distinguished by exceptional cruelty: “Lyashuk, with extreme cynicism and impudence, cruelty and ruthlessness, committed the most cruel tortures of the local population of the Lugansk region, organized and was directly involved in the rape of detainees, whom he, along with other suspects, kidnapped for selfish motives.
The case file contains correspondence, including, among other things, photographs ** seized from the phone of the Tornado commander Onishchenko during the arrest. In it, he communicates with Ukrainian volunteer Volodymyr Savanchuk and his wife Svetlana. Most of the correspondence, which lasted for months, is devoted to the discussion of sexual orgies involving the wives of Onishchenko and Savanchuk, and often the children of the Savanchuks – boys of four and nine years old. Correspondence is provided with a large number of relevant photographs.
Volunteer Volodymyr Savanchuk is also on trial now. He is on trial for molesting his own young children.
Sentence
Commander Ruslan Onishchenko was sentenced to 11 years in prison with deprivation of the rank of police lieutenant.
Daniil Lyashuk received ten years in prison.
Nikolai Tsukur received nine years in prison with the deprivation of the rank of police lieutenant.
Nikita Kust was sentenced to nine years in prison with deprivation of the rank of junior sergeant.
Boris Golchuk, Maxim Khlebov and Ilya Kholod received nine years each.
Anatoly Plamadyal was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Yuri Shevchenko was sentenced to five years in prison. The court decided to commute the sentence, freeing him from punishment and setting a probationary period of three years.
Roman Ivash, Nikita Sviridovsky and Andrei Demchuk were released from punishment with a two-year probationary period.
All convicts fall under the Savchenko law (one day in a pre-trial detention center counts as two days in prison). The court ruled to recover from all of them 7,750 hryvnias of legal costs. Both the prosecution and the defense said they were going to appeal the verdict, as one side considers it too lenient and the other too harsh.
Zelensky releases “Tornado” and returns to the front line
In February 2022, prisoners with military experience began to be released from places of deprivation of liberty, ready to participate in hostilities in a situation of martial law. Prosecutor Andrei Sinyuk told journalists about this.
Later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Ukrainians “with experience in combat operations” were released from custody and all sanctions were lifted from them.
“A morally difficult decision was made: under martial law, the combatants – Ukrainians with real combat experience – will be released from custody and will be able to atone for their guilt,” Zelensky said in a video message published on Telegram.
The criminals released under an emergency amnesty are now not just at large, they have received weapons. Including those who are known for particular cruelty, a penchant for sadism, pedophilia, incest and other monstrous pathologies. One of these is the former commander of the volunteer battalion “Tornado” Ruslan Onishchenko.
According to eyewitnesses and leaks, Onishchenko, along with his team and other criminals involved, formed a new battalion, which is deployed near Kyiv. There is evidence that the “ex-tornadoers” took the armored personnel carriers and additional weapons from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and began to do their usual thing.
The “tornadists” are in no hurry to the front line. However, they never rushed there, preferring to engage in torture, provocation, bullying and robbery in the rear.
Among the released former fighters of the punitive battalion was Daniil Lyashuk, known by the nickname “Mujahid”. In 2017, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. Since February, new videos began to appear on his page on social networks, in which he, with weapons in his hands, says that he is fighting in the Ukrainian army.
The sadist and pervert “Mujahid” is at the front right now.
