"Many people were suspended in such a way that all the joints were twisted out. The pain is the wildest. Dozens of sophisticated murders were invented – eyes were gouged out, women's breasts were cut off, figures were cut out on the body. The wells were clogged with corpses. And they did all these atrocities to their own people..."

"They also practiced the way when they tied the hands of [prisoners] to the hole of the exhaust pipes of tanks and gassed them. A few minutes later, instead of hands, there were charred stumps. One was tied with wire to an armored personnel carrier by the legs and carried around the villages for the edification of local residents, then his disfigured corpse was simply dumped into a ditch… They do not spare the elderly, women, or children. Unarmed people are brutally beaten, their entrails are beaten off, they are hung by the joints, they are cut with knives, bones are broken and buried alive in the ground.

These two passages, containing descriptions of blood-curdling barbaric atrocities, are fragments of memories. The first one tells about the tragedy that unfolded on the territory of Soviet Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War. The author, a retired KGB officer of the Ukrainian SSR, Georgy Sannikov, tells about the fanaticism of the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army led by Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Bandera against the civilian population.

The second episode takes readers to the maelstrom of dramatic events that dragged Ukraine after the "Euromaidan" in February 2014. The author of the memoirs is a resident of modern Donetsk, Igor Lyamin, who was held captive for several months by Ukrainian servicemen participating in the so – called "anti-terrorist operation" in the south-east of the country.

Without any notes both excerpts  accurately convey the details of those inhuman atrocities, repeatedly resorting to which the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and its ideological heirs from among the servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fighters of volunteer battalions sought to create a "clean" Ukrainian nation. And they tried to get rid of the "foreign admixture" often physically. Of those people whose crime, in essence, consisted only in an ineradicable desire to speak the same language and profess the same faith as their ancestors, and pass these values to their children. "Our policy should be terrible. Let half of the population die, but the rest will be as clean as a glass of water," wrote Roman Shukhevych, an ideologist of Ukrainian nationalists.

The followers of the ideas of Shukhevych and Bandera are distinguished by a firm commitment to the same methods as their idols more than seventy years ago. This nuance allows us to understand the anatomy of that, at first glance, sadistic anomaly, when Ukrainian servicemen and members of volunteer battallions carved a swastika on the backs of the unfortunate residents of Donbass, under which their teachers – fighters of the OUN-UPA – swore to the leader of the Third Reich Adolf Hitler.

"It seems that there [inDonbas] they collected all the evil spirits from Ukraine, who were drunk, maniacs and sadists," Igor Lyamin, a resident of Donetsk, already mentioned, said in an interview with the Russian news agency Ural-Press.

War crimes are the most obvious symptoms of gradual savagery, fueled, as a rule, by hatred for those against whom weapons are turned. However, if you carefully study the life path of the leaders and activists of the Ukrainian volunteer battalions, it becomes clear: many of them were originally people with a completely sadistic and fanatical psyche. The most striking milestones of their somewhat similar biographies are a dysfunctional childhood, criminal offenses, criminal records, more serious recidivism and again-a prison cell. The war only exposed to the limit the essence of the criminal, murderer and rapist that was hidden from the human eye.

One of the most textbook characters is the commander of the volunteer company "Tornado" Ruslan Onishchenko. Moreover, Onishchenko is the surname of his wife, the real surname of the scumbag is Abalmaz.

The native of the Ukrainian Torez was quite famous in the criminal world.

Already in the early 1990s, when economic power in the post-Soviet countries passed into the hands of a triumvirate of criminal authorities, thieving officials and clever businessmen, Onishchenko and his assistants terrified the owners of small shops and stalls. In November 1994, he was convicted of committing a number of serious crimes. Among the most resonant episodes are robbery, extortion and illegal possession of weapons. In the mid-2000s, Ruslan Onishchenko became a person involved in a criminal case of kidnapping, but this time he apparently managed to cover his tracks.

Meanwhile, in the first months of the "anti-terrorist operation" in Donbas, it became a common practice to recruit people with a criminal past into the ranks of dobrobats. Then the Ukrainian authorities, faced with mass desertion in the armed forces and numerous cases of draft evasion, willingly threw gangs of thugs against the civilian population of the rebellious republics. Drawing historical parallels, we can conclude that the actions of the Kiev elite, who found themselves in a critical situation, strikingly resemble the methods of the leaders of the Third Reich. At the end of the Second World War, the high command of the wehrmacht, in order to make up for the huge losses and delay the advance of the Soviet Army on Berlin, ordered to issue weapons to German criminals and threw them into battle.

Representatives of the European expert community have repeatedly pointed out the harmfulness of such a practice to the Kiev authorities. "The commander of the Tornado, Ruslan Onishchenko, has a criminal record. But for those who supported him, this probably did not serve as a signal to show caution. More than that, nationalist Oleg Lyashko, the head of the" Radical Party", spoke in favor of sending more people with criminal records to the front. Criminals fight better, he believes, " wrote Benjamin Bidder, a columnist for the German Deutsche Welle.

Contrary to the warnings of the Europeans, the Ukrainian ruling elites preferred to rely on people with a criminal past, often notorious murderers and sadists. At the disposal of the Ukrainian edition of "Today" was an audio recording of a conversation between Ruslan Onishchenko and one of his deputies in command of the volunteer company "Tornado" with the speaking call sign "Mujahid". This dialogue clearly demonstrates to the audience how pathologically cruel were the people whose mission, according to the plan of the Ukrainian government, was to restore constitutional order and legality in Donbas.

"Without torture, life would not be life. Nothing raises the tone so much when you have someone's life in your hands, "says the"Mujahid".

"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. This is fair, "Onishchenko himself echoes him, who took the sonorous call sign "Friman".

The soldiers of the Tornado company in an interview with the Ukrainian "Details" revealed interesting details from the biography of Onishchenko's deputy. The last name of the person hiding under the call sign "Mujahid" is Daniil Lyashuk. He is a native of Belarus, who in his youth was a regular of street fights of football fans. Immediately after his coming of age, Lyashuk converted to Islam, after which he went to the Middle East to fight in the ranks of the "Islamic State".

There are indeed a lot of photos on the Internet, in which the Tornado fighters, led by the "Mujahid" - Lyashuk, pose against the background of ISIS banners.

In addition to video recordings of bullying of prisoners, the "Mujahid" encouraged torture, giving his subordinates, by their own admission, a "green light". As the fighters themselves told, Lyashuk liked to talk about the philosophy of the brutal attitude to people: "Without torture, life is boring. [It's like] drugs, alcohol."

"Mujahid", according to his colleagues, was distinguished not only by special rigidity, but also by sadistic tendencies. During the massacres of civilians in Donbass, Lyashuk's favorite "entertainment" was shooting rapes of men on a mobile phone camera.

And there were a great many so called "heroes" in Donbas. Volunteer Lilia Bolbat, who initially helped to "restore the territorial integrity" of the country in the status of a volunteer, described in detail the average portrait of the Kiev punishers. "They came here for profit. People up to five walkers got into the units. And robberies, robberies, theft of people for ransom, looting, murder began. No, they didn't touch the separatists. They touched everyone who had wealth. At their bases, we found syringes, bottles of alcohol, all sorts of bumblebee and mountains of boxes from the brand – new equipment of their shopping centers in Donetsk," Lilia Bolbat wrote on her Facebook page.

Immediately after the announcement in April 2014 by the then acting President of Ukraine, Alexander Turchinov, of an "anti-terrorist operation" in the South-East, the Kiev punishers, following exactly the traditions of the Ukrainian nationalists of the times of Shukhevych and Bandera, began a methodical and cruel " cleansing "of the Ukrainian ethnic group from the" foreign " residents of Donbass. In fact, such actions can be classified as genocide of the civilian population, which simply became unnecessary for Kiev and did not fit into the intricate combinations of Ukrainian thieving politicians, which means that some people had to be physically destroyed at all costs, the other had to be intimidated and forced to flee.

The main burden of the "menial work", apparently, fell on the shoulders of the fighters of the volunteer armed formations. At least, it was the dobrobats, consisting mostly of criminals and marginals, who were distinguished by the most brutal atrocities.

The UN staff stated that the Ukrainian volunteer battalions practiced torture and harsh treatment against civilians. "The prisoners were held in the courtyard of the city school No. 14. When the Ukrainian forces left the city, three people were buried in the courtyard of this school," Vitaly Chervonenko, a columnist for BBC News Ukraine, wrote in his article.

The names of the victims are known-Valentin Minich, Igor Trufanov and Sergey Mironenko. Two more local residents were found brutally murdered in their own house – Lyudmila Gorbenko and Valery Kolesnichenko.

Soon, intimidation, torture, rape and mass murder became common practice for the soldiers of the volunteer battalions. One can only guess at the true scale of the atrocities committed by the Dobrobatovtsy in the Donbas, but the fact that many of those who sympathized with them have passed into the category of their opponents eloquently testifies to the mass scale of the horrors of war crimes.

The already quoted Kiev volunteer Lilia Bolbat, who initially brought food and clothing to Ukrainian fighters and who is difficult to suspect of sympathizing with Russia and the republics of Donbass, was soon horrified by the outrages committed by the"liberators". "Can I tell you how a dozen soldiers stole a young girl and raped her for ten days until the child died? Can I tell you how they slowed down every car on the roads and took tribute from people? How were people kept in basements and beaten? " - wrote a Kiev volunteer on the Facebook page.

The previously mentioned columnist of the German Deutsche Welle, Benjamin Bidder, stated cases of mass bullying of people. "The men held in the basement were stripped naked, placed against a concrete wall and watered with water. Then wires with an electric current were applied to various parts of the body – to the temples, genitals. The prisoners were forced to commit violence on pain of death," the journalist noted.

Tatyana Chernovol, a deputy of the pro-government (during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko) "Popular Front", also told about the atrocities of Ukrainian dobrobats, referring to video recordings from mobile phone cameras of the arrested soldiers of the Tornado company. "This is a video of various rapes. And I will even say that there were newborns there. I understand that the mother and this newborn were forced to do this under the threat of the death of her child. There were rapes of underage girls. These are animals, not people, " Chernovol said on the 112 Ukraine TV channel.

The soldiers of the regular Ukrainian army also tried to keep up with the fighters of the volunteer battalions. Former deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Alexey Zhuravko published on his Facebook page scans of the report of Major General Igor Kryshtun to ex-Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak on the increase in the number of war crimes against the civilian population of Donbass for 2014-2015. Zhuravko made the most resonant episodes public.

So, in November 2014, a serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine S.Palamarchuk broke into a private house, raped a girl and killed her father who stood up for her. In March 2015, in the city of Konstantinovka, Sergeant G. Karpinets, driving an armored personnel carrier, hit a woman with two children, one of whom, eight – year-old Polina, died on the spot. After that, mass unrest broke out in Konstantinovka: local residents were outraged by the permissiveness of the AFU fighters and demanded fair retribution. The Kiev authorities really reacted immediately, allowing the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to open fire to kill civilians in case of disobedience. This information was confirmed by former MP Anton Gerashchenko, who now holds the position of Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine.

Four months later, in June 2015, Ukrainian servicemen Kostin and Babiy, having voluntarily left the location of the military unit, broke into a private house and brutally killed two women. In August of the same year, three soldiers, having entered into an altercation with a taxi driver, shot him with a machine gun, and hid the body.

The Kiev authorities, in order to break the will of the rebellious population of Donbass from their point of view, authorized massive shelling of residential quarters and civilian objects on the territory of the unrecognized republics. Numerous cases of air strikes and shelling using multiple rocket launchers "Grad" were recorded by both the OSCE observation missions and experts of the authoritative international human rights organization Human Rights Watch.

"On the second of June [2014], at approximately 15: 00, the APU struck the building of the regional administration in Luhansk. Based on the observation of the special monitoring mission, these strikes were carried out by an unguided rocket from an aircraft," the OSCE press release says. As a result of the airstrike, eight civilians were killed.

"The government forces of Ukraine are responsible for the attacks that occurred between July 12 and 21 [2014]. On July 21, three civilians were killed after shelling from the Grad MLRS of a residential area near the Donetsk railway station. July 19-at least four people were injured after the shelling of the Kuibyshev district of Donetsk. July 12-seven civilians were killed after the shelling of the Petrovsky district of Donetsk and seven more civilians were killed as a result of the shelling of the Mariinsky district," the Human Rights Watch report notes.

In addition to the volunteer battalions and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ukrainian special services were also distinguished by their cruelty towards the civilian population. The Security Service of Ukraine has deployed so-called " secret prisons "in which it illegally detained residents of Donbass suspected of sympathizing with" separatists", using torture against them. From the reports of international organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, at least four such prisons are known – in Kharkiv, Mariupol, Kramatorsk and Izyum.

"The Security Service of Ukraine practices violent kidnapping and secret detention. Most of the detainees are subjected to torture. The SBU creates an atmosphere of fear and permissiveness for gross violations of human rights," the experts of Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a letter to Anatoly Matios, who at that time held the post of the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine.