Detainees were hauled off individually for interrogation, which involved heavy beatings, including some to the head, and electrical shocks. “It is as if your whole body is pricked with needles,” Vasiliy said. Human rights officials have recorded similar accounts of electrical shocks being used.

“We were given food and drink once a day,” Vasiliy said. “Sometimes we could go without food for two or three days. There was no toilet; they gave us bottles to use. We slept together on car tires. No sanitary standards to speak of.”

He said Russian interrogators had been obsessed with rooting out members of Nazi groups — the main reason given by Moscow for its military operation against Ukraine.

“They said they had come to liberate us from the Nazis, from the Ukrainian authorities, so that we can live better,” he recounted. “I told them: ‘I worked all the time at the service station. I didn’t see Nazis. Everything was good.’”