Dmytro Khylyuk was a journalist when Russian soldiers took him at gunpoint from his village outside Kyiv in the first weeks of the full-scale war. He spent three years in custody and was released in August 2025. Of Correctional Colony No. 7 in Pakino, he says: “The tiles there were sharp. People kept cutting themselves on them, and the wounds would start to fester. And there was no medical treatment at all there.”
The colony, known as IK-7, sits in the Vladimir region northeast of Moscow. A joint investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has now put a name to the prison doctor that dozens of former inmates blame for much of the abuse there: Vyacheslav Cherdantsev.
What former prisoners describe
Schemes spoke to about 50 Ukrainians, mostly soldiers, who came home in prisoner exchanges. They described beatings on the soles of the feet until they could not walk, and being made to crawl across the floor “like a seal.”
The doctor, they said, withheld treatment. He also forced prisoners to strip, threatened them with rape and made them pose in humiliating positions or simulate sex with one another.
David Pradchenko, a marine infantryman captured during the siege of Mariupol and taken to IK-7 in October 2022, said a 23-year-old fellow marine, Pavlo Polyoviy, killed himself after abuse and a severe stress-induced rash that went untreated. Polyoviy had asked for medicine. According to Pradchenko, the doctor brushed him off: “What do you have here? I don’t see anything here.”
Ihor Shyshko, 43, a special forces officer, spent 801 days in Russian custody, much of it at IK-7. He said he and 14 cellmates were kept naked for a month, and that the doctor often forced inmates outdoors for what he called “sun baths.” Shyshko also described an examination in which the doctor pushed a shared stick into his inflamed throat. Several prisoners watched and laughed, he said.
Prisoners had nicknames for the man: “Doctor Death,” “Doctor Dung,” “Sandal” for the sandals he wore in every season. The one that stuck was “Konoval,” a word for a farrier that is used for a quack. None of them knew his surname.
Identifying the doctor
Schemes worked from accounts by prisoners and law enforcement officers, social media posts and official documents. It had done similar work in 2025, in an award-winning investigation with OCCRP that identified the doctor known to inmates of IK-10 in Mordovia as “Dr. Evil.” Like him, Cherdantsev works for a branch of the Federal Penitentiary Service’s medical and sanitary unit that serves the region where the prison is located.
OCCRP gives his age as 48 and says he is originally from Kyrgyzstan, where he worked as a paramedic in a juvenile colony. He moved to Russia in 2013, got citizenship and began work at IK-7 in 2015.
Cherdantsev did not respond to repeated calls and messages. Neither did the Federal Penitentiary Service or the prison administration.
Charges in Ukraine
The Schemes and OCCRP report came out on a Thursday in July. The next day, July 10, Ukraine’s Security Service issued notices of suspicion against Cherdantsev and a 29-year-old Russian inmate, Yaroslav Kirillov, under Article 438 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which covers cruel treatment of prisoners of war and civilians. Cherdantsev was served in absentia.
The notice says he and others “used physical and psychological violence” and humiliated and insulted several Ukrainian servicemen. The Security Service alleges the abuse ran from 2022 to 2025. It says the doctor tried to push captives into accepting Russian citizenship and signing false confessions. It also alleges he beat patients or ordered others to, including Kirillov, and tore off a prisoner’s toenail with forceps without anesthetic.
The same documents allege that during a scabies outbreak, infected inmates were put into crowded cells with healthy ones. As punishment, sick prisoners were stripped of clothing and belongings for up to six weeks, according to Ukrainian authorities.
The notices also name two other prison employees, Deputy Security Chief O.V. Khavetskyi and operative G.R. Shvetsov. The Security Service says they allowed subordinates to torture Ukrainian captives so long as no visible marks were left.
Ukraine’s Prosecutor-General’s Office told Schemes that war crimes documented at the Pakino prison include “torture, inhuman treatment, outrages upon human dignity,” rape and other sexual violence.
Sources
- Investigation Reveals Identity Of Russian Prison Doctor Accused Of Abusing Ukrainian Captives
- Ukraine Accuses Russian Prison Doctor of War Crimes Following OCCRP/Schemes Investigation
