Melitopol resident accused of preparing a terrorist attack tells court of electric shock torture and ‘some kind of injections’

Testifying before the Southern District Military Court, 53-year-old Melitopol resident Olga Kapralova, who is accused of preparing an act of terrorism, described being abducted and tortured. Her testimony followed similar evidence given by her husband Gennady, Mediazona reports.

Investigators allege that the Kapralovs were members of an underground group which, in 2023, was preparing to poison Russian troops and collaborationist officials using methadone, methanol and the chemical warfare agent BZ. They have been charged with preparing an act of terrorism, membership of a terrorist community, and trafficking in explosives, drugs and chemical weapons of mass destruction. A third defendant in the case, the Kapralovs’ neighbour Diliaver Kurshutov, was sentenced by the Southern District Military Court to ten years’ imprisonment. According to investigators, the three Melitopol residents were directed by a Ukrainian ‘handler’, intelligence officer Oleksandr Kohut.

During her testimony, Olga Kapralova denied the charges and retracted the statements she had given during the investigation.

‘From August to November 2023, before my detention was officially recorded, I was effectively held by the security forces without any preventive measure having been imposed. I can’t give exact addresses or names because I was moved around in such a way that I couldn’t tell where I was or get my bearings, and I had no access to a phone, an independent lawyer or my relatives. At first they subjected me to severe physical and psychological abuse. They threatened me, including by threatening the safety of my children and grandchildren. By November 2023 I was in such a state that I was ready to sign anything they put in front of me,’ she said.

Olga Kapralova insisted that she had not only never received instructions from the ‘handler’, but did not even know of his existence. ‘I had never even heard the surname Kohut. Sometimes the name Sasha came up,’ she explained. She said she did not know whether her husband had mentioned Kohut.

Olga Kapralova said she could not describe the people who abducted and tortured her because they wore civilian clothes and always had their faces covered with balaclavas. However, she was able to identify the building in Melitopol where she and her husband had been held.

‘Through the painted-over windows, I could tell roughly where I was. In places the paint had worn away, and through those gaps I could see the clock on the Hidromash factory. There’s a bridge next to it leading to Novy Melitopol — it’s the only one in the city,’ she explained.

She also recalled that, long before the events of 2023, she had visited the same building where she was held, together with her young daughter. At the time, it had been a clinic.

‘They gave me electric shocks, choked me, injected me with some kind of substance, and beat me — I don’t know what with, because I had a plastic bag over my head and my hands were tied behind my back,’ she said.

According to Olga Kapralova, the torture stopped once her detention had been officially recorded, but the pressure and threats continued.

‘The same man who had held us in that building came to see me at the temporary detention centre. He came without a lawyer or an investigator, bringing documents for me to sign. On the way to see the investigator, he told me: “If you keep resisting, we’ll go back for more,”‘ she said.

After Olga Kapralova’s testimony, her earlier statements made during the investigation were read out in court because of ‘significant contradictions’. She said she had pointed out to the investigator that the record attributed statements to her that she had never made, but he had ignored her objection. ‘You can prove that in court,’ she recalled him saying.

Mediazona previously published detailed testimony given by Gennady Kapralov in court on 28 May. He described a secret prison near the bridge in Melitopol as a former clinic or hospital, ‘with the windows smeared over with resin’. According to Gennady Kapralov, prisoners were regularly ‘taken off for torture’, from which they ‘came back soaked. They poured water over you. When they use electric shocks on someone, you can tell just by looking at them.’ After hearing his wife’s screams through the wall during one interrogation, he attempted to hang himself from a radiator, but a guard saved his life.

After Olga Kapralova’s testimony, Gennady asked to address the court and congratulated her on their 36th wedding anniversary, which had fallen just a few days earlier.