When the Ukrainians lost control of a position near the town of Pokrovsk earlier this year, a soldier known only as Vladyslav was taken prisoner along with seven others. What happened next was a display of the most calculated savagery. Their Russian captors, taking each man in turn, sliced off their genitals, gouged out their eyes and cut off their ears, noses and lips.
We know this because, when it came to Vladyslav, 33, they contented themselves with giving him a beating, tying him up, slitting his throat and throwing him into a pit with his mutilated comrades. While all the others subsequently died, Vladyslav found a shard of glass from a broken bottle and used it to saw through the ropes binding his wrists.
