Horror pic shows GAS MASK used to suffocate victims in Putin’s ‘medieval’ dungeons where ‘hundreds suffered torture’

GAS masks with covered breathing holes were put over the heads of Ukrainian victims by Russians in “medieval” acts of torture, it’s claimed.

Vladimir Putin’s thugs are accused of torturing “hundreds” of victims held in dungeons at a police station in occupied Ukraine, using barbaric methods to inflict maximum suffering.

Horrific evidence of fresh war crimes is emerging from the newly liberated city of Izyum after the Russians fled a lightning Ukrainian advance, including mass graves as well as torture chambers.

A homemade electric chair was used to inflict savage shocks on Ukrainian captives while others were castrated before being killed.

Taras Berezovets, who serves with the Ivan Bohun brigade of the Ukrainian army’s special forces, and is the unit’s spokesman, has now revealed other barbaric torture methods he’s come across.

“They also tortured people with gas masks – we found two of them,” he told The Sun Online.

“In this torture, you put the gas mask over the head and close the holes so they can’t inhale - to suffocate people.

“This is cruelty from the Middle Ages like the Spanish Inquisition. We’ve been shocked by it."

Berezovets said the torture methods he has come across have the hallmarks of the KGB secret service of the former Soviet Union, in which Vladimir Putin served as an officer.

"It's exactly what the KGB used for torture, suffocation along with electric shocks. The KGB used it for many decades. Nothing has changed."

Berezovets said in the basement of the police station he came across about ten cells and above that about “four floors more with torture rooms and interrogation rooms”.

In a video he took, one of the gas masks can be seen sitting on a box in one of the rooms where the torture is said to have started, soon after the Russians seized the town in the early days of the war.

He said that throughout the Russian occupation “hundreds” were held in the squalid cells before being dragged out and tortured.

“We know that if we’re talking about this Izyum secret prison when we know there were 24 people in a cell.

“The Russians have been very accurate about documenting their crimes so the police have received documents with all the prisoners’ names.

It's exactly what the KGB used for torture... Nothing has changed

Taras BerezovetsUkrainian special forces

“We can talk about at least several hundred people who have been kept in this secret prison. I know that several hundred have been tortured.

“The documents weren’t destroyed by the Russians so they are in the hands of Ukrainian investigators.”

Berezovets said he felt “hatred” when he came across the evidence of the Russian crimes.

“When I looked in the cells I came across Ukrainian army uniforms so they kept prisoners of war and they tortured them in there,” he said.

“When you see it you want hatred and you want revenge and to retaliate at any cost.”

The horror being gradually being revealed in Izyum, with mass graves and accounts of Russian sadism, is now resembling Bucha, one of the first areas to be liberated.

When the Russians were driven out of the town near Kyiv, mass graves began to be unearthed which revealed torture inflicted on Ukrainians before they were killed.

Investigators have said nearly all the bodies exhumed from the 450 mass graves in Izyum showed signs of torture - including castration.

Yevheny Yenin, Ukraine's first deputy minister of internal affairs, said: "We continue to find bodies with signs of violent death - there are many of them.

"These include broken ribs and cracked skulls, men with bound hands, broken jaws, and severed genitalia."

Oleg Synehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, added: "Some of the dead have signs of a violent death. There are bodies with tied hands and traces of torture.

"The deceased were also found to have explosive, shrapnel and stab wounds."