Ukrainian authorities on Friday officially charged a Russian prison doctor and an inmate accomplice with war crimes, detailing a horrific campaign of torture, sexual violence, and medical abuse against Ukrainian prisoners of war and abducted civilians.
The formal Notices of Suspicion issued by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) follow a joint investigation published Thursday by OCCRP and Schemes, which exposed systematic abuse at Correctional Colony No. 7 (IK-7) in Russia's Vladimir region.
Reporters from Schemes shared their findings with Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, helping investigators identify the perpetrators. The journalistic investigation drew on interviews with about 50 captives who returned from the colony between 2024 and May 2026. Multiple survivors identified the prison doctor, known to them by the nickname "Konoval" (The Quack), as 48-year-old Vyacheslav Cherdantsev.
Former inmates told journalists that Cherdantsev denied sick prisoners medication, subjected them to forced nudity and degrading examinations, and coerced them into simulating sexual acts for the amusement of guards. One prisoner, 23-year-old Marine Pavlo Polovyi, hanged himself in the prison after being denied medical treatment.
The newly released SBU documents formally charge Cherdantsev, an employee of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), along with his enforcer, 29-year-old Russian inmate Yaroslav Kirillov. Both men are charged under Article 438 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code for the cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians.
According to the SBU, Cherdantsev weaponized his medical position to break the will of Ukrainian captives, attempting to coerce them into accepting Russian citizenship and providing false confessions to justify Russia's invasion.
Providing granular details of the abuse, the SBU charging documents outline a litany of atrocities allegedly committed between 2022 and 2025. Rather than providing care, the agency alleges Cherdantsev routinely beat prisoners who visited the medical unit or ordered guards and inmates, including Kirillov, to do so. In one instance, Cherdantsev allegedly ripped off a prisoner's toenail with forceps without anesthesia or prior warning.
The SBU alleges that when a scabies epidemic broke out among the captives, the doctor and prison administration intentionally placed infected inmates into crowded cells with healthy prisoners to spread the disease. As "punishment" for the outbreak, Ukrainian authorities say Cherdantsev stripped sick prisoners of all clothing and belongings for up to six weeks. The naked inmates were forced to stand in freezing temperatures, take ice-cold showers, and run through the prison corridors, where guards forced them to stand pressed genitals-to-buttocks in shower lines.
The SBU documents also detail horrific sexual violence. In mid-2023, Cherdantsev and Kirillov allegedly cornered a Ukrainian POW in the prison library. After the prisoner refused the doctor's demands to engage in a sexual act, the SBU states the two men severely beat him and sexually assaulted him using a broken chair leg. Kirillov later brought another Russian inmate into the cell and ordered him to rape the Ukrainian POW, beating the victim in the head with a soap bar wrapped in a towel when he resisted, according to the charges.
In other instances of sexual humiliation detailed by Ukrainian investigators, Cherdantsev allegedly used ‘zelenka’—a brilliant green antiseptic dye—to paint genitalia and obscene, sexually explicit inscriptions on the bodies and faces of sick prisoners.
The background of the accused doctor traces back to Kyrgyzstan, where he worked as a paramedic in a juvenile colony. He moved to Russia in 2013, received citizenship, and began working at IK-7 in 2015.
The SBU asserts the abuse at IK-7 was part of a highly organized, repressive system sanctioned by the colony’s leadership. The official notices name Deputy Security Chief O.V. Khavetskyi and operative G.R. Shvetsov as co-conspirators who gave subordinates permission to torture Ukrainian captives as long as the abuse did not leave visible marks.
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