Kherson, scarred by the Russian occupation: accounts of torture and abuse 3:30
KHERSON, Ukraine (CNN) --
Oleksander's restless pale blue eyes speak as loud as his words.
He is nervous, and rightly so, returning to jail in the newly liberated city of Kherson, where he says he is beaten daily by Russian guards.
We make our way past cell blocks and rusting open-air exercise cages, past guard rooms, turnstiles and heavy iron gates, and past fences topped with piles of barbed wire in this Soviet-era prison to reach one of the epicenters of the brutal Russian occupation of Ukraine.
It is here, in a dark hallway littered with rubble, that Oleksander and another former detainee who declined to be interviewed say Russian guards executed Ukrainian prisoners for their pro-Ukrainian chants or tattoos.
CNN identifies Oleksander only by his first name for security reasons.
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As Oleksander pushes open the solid red iron door of the cell, at the end of the corridor, burning wood falls from the ceiling, smoke rises, and embers fall.
The roof of this part of the cell block is on fire and the burning logs are collapsing.
That's where the Russian troops took people to torture them, Oleksander tells us.
After the Russians withdrew from Kherson "they set fire to it to destroy evidence of her crimes," he says.
It is impossible to enter to check it, due to the flames.
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The Russian withdrawal was swift: some 30,000 soldiers, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, carried out their withdrawal within three days of Russia's announcement that they were leaving.
They had been preparing for the move for several weeks and blamed it on poor supply lines across the Dnipro River, which Ukraine had been intentionally attacking with US-made HIMARS rocket launchers since late July.
Back in the daylight outside the cell block, Oleksander says he was detained in his apartment by Russian police, accused of being a criminal.
He says they deliberately broke her leg by kneeling on her while being held.
He tells us that it was not the first time he was in the Kherson prison, since he had been there for a crime.
But unlike the Ukrainian guards, he says, the Russians were unnecessarily brutal.
"They mistreated everyone, they starved us, they used us as free labor to repair their military vehicles, they beat us however they wanted," says Oleksander.
The moment when Russian attacks hit the city of Dnipro 0:47
Russia has previously denied war crimes allegations and claimed that its forces do not target civilians, despite extensive evidence gathered by international human rights experts, criminal investigators and international media in multiple locations.
Fear of the collaborators in Kherson
Kosta's experience was different: his alleged abuse was more psychological than physical, though he says he experienced a lot of that, too.
The Russians suspected him of being part of a clandestine network of saboteurs targeting their officials and facilities, says Kosta, who CNN only identifies by his first name for security reasons.
Mysterious car bombs and other explosions had become a persistent concern for the Russian-based local administration, whose chief, Kirill Stremousov, died in a sudden and unexplained car accident during the last days of the Russian occupation.
Shortly after underground activists blew up a Russian police vehicle near Kherson de Kosta's apartment, he says 11 heavily armed Russians showed up at his door and forced their way inside.
Closer to 30 than 20, Kosta doesn't allow us to show his face on camera.
He says that the Russians have it in a database and that they knew the details of his mobile phones when they showed up at his apartment.
They were so well prepared that they knew where he had gone to school, Kosta says, and accused him of having previously been a member of "Right Sector," a far-right nationalist organization with political and military wings.
He denies belonging to the organization.
When we gather in Kherson's central square, amid the cacophony of liberation celebrations, Kosta is less joyous than the others around him.
He says that he is having a little trouble adjusting to the new freedoms and that he fears that the Russian collaborators, who are still on the loose, might attack him.
Many Ukrainians who came to talk to us in the first days of liberation told us they were surprised at how many people they knew had collaborated with the Russians when they took control of the city in early March.
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A lively 71-year-old former naval engineer who came up to talk to us just hours after the Russians had left, was especially lively about it.
"Many people who were born here, educated here, who work here, welcomed the orcs (an anti-Russian slur), I was in awe, I hated it," said the man, who did not give his name.
The reasons for this collaboration vary.
Conversations with the townspeople suggest that a minority were pro-Russian and thought the Russians would be there to stay, so collaboration was the path to an easier life;
others were forced by the Russians to collaborate.
Unlike Kosta, the former engineer was less concerned with the reappearance of those who collaborated with the Russians and more with their accountability.
"I want to say burn these people who collaborated with foreign forces in hell," he said.
A former prisoner holds the keys to Kherson's central prison after the liberation of the city by Ukrainian forces.
It was really scary
Under any other circumstances, Kosta seems like the type to handle himself—lean and, judging by his handshake, strong—but he says the Russians put him through a psychological drink.
It started, he says, while he was still inside the apartment when the Russians first detained him.
"A guy came up to me with a gun, with a gun to my head and started asking me questions. Do you know what's going to happen to your wife? If you don't tell us the truth? I said yes, I would tell everyone, to start asking questions. They say no, you'll tell us no questions asked."
That was just the beginning, says Kosta.
When he was taken to a police station and put in a cell, the mental torture worsened.
"There's nothing that can prepare you for it," he says.
They put a gun to his head again, he says, and told him to talk — again, no questions asked, to increase the pressure on him to talk — and pulled the trigger.
Emotions burn deeper on Kosta's face as he explains the torment.
"I'm not sure my whole life flashed before my eyes, but it was really scary," he says.
Kosta does not claim to be part of that resistance organized in part by the Ukrainian intelligence service, or SBU, but many people in Kherson helped where they could.
A hotel owner told CNN that he hid wounded Ukrainian soldiers in his basement for several months until they could get to safety.
Russian control of Kherson depended on the eradication of pro-Ukrainian sentiment.
Kosta knew that if he couldn't convince the Russians that he was innocent, they would take him to Russian-controlled territory for further interrogation.
After the mock execution, he says, they tried fake electrocutions.
"They put electricity in my testicles... but they didn't turn on the current."
He said he had been prepared to break if the torture got too physical.
"I understand that [with] real torture nobody can take it," he says.
In fact, in the cells below hers, she says she could hear people screaming and crying for her mothers as they were beaten to make them confess.
Despite everything, he did not collapse and, without solid evidence, he says, the Russians let him go, but he still finds himself looking over his shoulder.
Kosta may feel some relief in the coming weeks;
A Ukrainian reconnaissance commander CNN met months ago during the Kherson offensive arrived in the city Monday with a stated mission: to eliminate residents who had worked with the Russians.
How the Ukrainian military treats those suspects will be a true measure of how far they want to break away from the Russian-style brutality that Kherson suffered through most of 2022.
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