Andrei Morozov (nick-name “Murza”), is an ultranationalist activist from Moscow who heads a small Russian neo-Stalinist nationalist group called “Red Blitzkrieg,” among the groups supporting the pro-Russian separatists in southeastern Ukraine as we reported.

Morozov travelled to the region and tried to join the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” but was arrested and tortured by the “militia” for his trouble. Ultimately he was released, and wrote an account on 21 May of his ordeal.

Pro-Russian separatists took over the Antratsit Administrative Building on 7 May 2014, the week before Morozov arrived. He was jailed and tortured in this building. Photo by antratsit.net

The Interpreter has provided a translation:

“My right arm is slowly recovering, the swelling just isn’t going down, and I’ve had a lot of work and other business. Therefore I’ll simply describe in brief this whole story with my trip to the Donbass.



I left on 9 May by train from Rostov, and on the night of 10-11 May, successfully crossed the border through an open field. On 11 May in the morning, I arrived by taxi to the city of Antratsit. I went there, because as is known, the city had been held since early May by forces allied with the Strelkov group in Slavyansk, providing Slavyansk the rear guard and communications. I went to the building of the city administration, introduced myself, and asked to sign up with the militia in Slavyansk, where it was most difficult of all.

The ‘couch warriors’ from Moscow itself were met by the rank-and-file fighters with unfeigned enthusiasm. I was received at the command, all my questions were gladly answered, and I provided the telephone numbers of people who could confirm that I was who I said I was. I was told to wait, and spent the whole day in the hallway of the first floor of the administration building among the fighters.

On the night of 12th May, without any commentary, I was taken to the dead end of the corridor behind an armory, where there was a room for interrogations. They searched all my clothing unsuccessfully for any ‘inserts,” then nevertheless forced me to change into camouflage pants and a telnyashka from the militia stock.

After this, they chained me in handcuffs to the window bars, leaning me against the wall. They had only one question for me: ‘Who came along with you?’ Naturally I replied that I was alone. They didn’t ask me any more questions. Since threats and simple beatings didn’t give them any results — I wasn’t a spy and had nothing to confess — they decided to torture me in the following manner.

They put something like a pillow case over my head and wrapped it with tape, then taped and roped me, handcuffed, by my wrists and the knee of my left leg to the bars, so that I was placed on the wall at an angle, so that my joints were turned out at the most uncomfortable position possible, and the whole weight of my body fell on my wrists and knee. They tied my right leg for that purpose to the knee of my left leg in such a way that I couldn’t put my weight on anything normally.

For some time I had to stay like that, then my strength gave way and I simply hung by my wrists and knee. I asked them to give me the opportunity to speak to the command. In reply, they told me I’d “be in a coffin in white slippers” before that would happen. I began to get delirious from the pain in my wrists, then lost consciousness.

Naturally, I didn’t confess to anything, as I wasn’t a spy for the Right Sector [Ukrainian ultranationalist paramilitary group] fighters. I was removed from this ‘crucifixion’ only when it became clear that in just a little while, necrosis would set in, and the fingers of my hand would have to be amputated.

That night, in the administration building in Antratsit, they tortured a local resident who was also accused of espionage — I heard his cries. After beating him, he was ‘packed into’ a wooden trunk, and then they screwed on the lid (they looked around for a screw-driver for a long time), and carried him away. Judging from the following unfavorable commentaries from the ‘counter-intelligence agents,’ the guy, having decided that they were going to bury him alive, didn’t withstand the nervous stress and soiled himself in their favorite torture box.

The simple ‘spies,’ who, as it turned out later, were four in number, were kept in the basement. As apparently the most dangerous, I was left chained to the window bars for several days, under constant watch of an armed guard. A limping man, taken out to the bathroom under armed guard, looks especially funny when he is unable even to undo the button on his trousers because of his damaged hands.

Several days later, once again without any commentary, I was bound up with tape, ‘packed’ into some sort of sheet and then driven away. Then, after crossing some streams, I was handed over to someone along with another ‘spy.’ He was a young man of liberal convictions of about 25, named Anton or Denis, whose fate shed some light on these events. He was also a Muscovite, and had gone to Euromaidan in the winter, and taken part in one of the self-defense groups.

After the ‘Victory of Maidan,’ he had guarded Mezhigorye and as a result wound up in Donetsk where, according to him, he was seized after he said, in an ordinary conversation with someone, that there were no drugs on the Maidan. He was seized on the 7th, beat purely cosmetically, confessed who he was and where he had come from and then was imprisoned in the basement. Apparently they thought I was his comrade-in-arms because I was also a Muscovite.

We did not know to whom and why we were transferred. We were interrogated about who we were and where we came from, after which for a day or two we were kept in neighboring cells in some jail without rules of procedure on the wall, and without institutional stamps on the sheets.

After that, we were once again tied up, the pillow-cases were put on our heads, we were wound up with tape and driven off somewhere. First the two of us, then just me alone. I was unloaded from the car, dragged across the stream and then put on the banks “with a hello from Pan Jarosz” [Right Sector leader], with my passport in my pocket.

At that moment I realized that my silence during interrogations had so convinced the militia men that I was a spy for Right Sector that they had give me, along with Anton/Denis, to the Ukrainians in exchange for some of their own. And those people politely returned me as unnecessary.

Russian border guards found me on 17 May on the bank, in the pose of a thinker, in camouflage and a telnyashka with the pillow-case on my head. They fed me, took me to the hospital, questioned me, and fined me 2,000 rubles for unlawful crossing of the border.”

Morozov wrotes that he didn’t hold any grudge against the people who tortured him, and if they had put a gun in his hand, would have fought on their side. He didn’t mind having his belongings confiscated, including an expensive bullet-proof vest, computer and radio telephone, as they went to the good of the cause.

“Great states, great armies and great intelligence agencies don’t come from nowhere and their path from non-existence to greatness is always full of mistakes and defeats,” he philosophized.

Even so, “Murz” had a message for Strelkov to explain why he seemed to get so few recruits (Strelkov recently complained about how few people in Donetsk, with its population of about 2 million, were signing up with the separatists.)

‘Dear Igor Ivanovich!

Possibly if your rear guards stop ‘re-enacting’ the White counter-intelligence of the times of the civil war in Antratsit, and stop torturing local workers on the slightest suspicion of ‘espionage,’ people will be drawn to you more willingly. Otherwise, you will get instead of massive help and support, a ‘re-enactment’ of a workers’ rebellion at your own rear.”

