Protests in front of house near Kyiv: No evidence of a Ukrainian torture prison

Fact finder Protests in front of house near Kiev No evidence of a Ukrainian torture prison As of: November 10, 2026 • 3:22 p.m

Violent protests, a disturbed teenager, a desperate doctor: images are spreading on the Internet with claims about the discovery of a Ukrainian torture prison near Kiev. What is known about this?

At the beginning of November, protests broke out in front of a residential building in a Kiev suburb. Hundreds of people besieged the house, and videos showed angry young men hitting a police bus and trying to overturn it. Smoke bombs and eggs were thrown.

It is certain that there were Ukrainian soldiers in the house and four of them were medically examined for injuries. However, it is unclear exactly how many soldiers were in the building, whether there were any forced recruits among them and where the injuries came from.

The accusation that sparked the protests was that members of the Ukrainian National Guard were being held and tortured in the house. This depiction quickly spread on social media. One post, which has been viewed more than 14 million times, said a "Zelensky torture chamber" had been discovered near Kiev, whose youngest victim was "only 14 years old." The post includes an image and video of a distraught-looking teenager wrapped in a blanket and being led away.

The young person's image spread internationally as evidence of torture. There is no evidence of this.

The teenager's pictures are shared on X by the Russian Foreign Ministry, among others. AfD leader Alice Weidel and BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht also shared corresponding posts. Weidel wrote that she "expects the federal government to address this in Berlin today during Selensky's visit." Wagenknecht asked: “Is this what defending ‘our values’ looks like?”

The boy's image also appeared in postings modeled on the online presence of major European media outlets such as Euronews, LaCroix and Libération.

The contributions give the impression that they come from European media. In fact, they are fake.

These supposed front pages are fakes. They were not published on the official accounts of the relevant media companies. Experts, including the research collective "antibot4navalny", attribute these fakes to the Russian disinformation campaign Matryoshka. There is also no evidence that the house is a “torture chamber” for Ukrainian soldiers.

Other images and videos circulating online about the incident show a woman dressed as an emergency doctor kneeling on the ground in front of police officers and asking to be allowed into the house. According to media reports, she claims that 40 people are being held captive in the house, some have been beaten, one has a broken spine - to support her statement, she shows the video of a man with injuries, which is said to have come from the house. Behind her is an ambulance from the private ambulance service Med-Prestige. According to the woman, she is the boss.

Valentyna Moloda described herself as an emergency doctor and made serious allegations against the Ukrainian National Guard.

According to research by the Ukrainian investigative portal slidstvo.info, the woman's name is Valentyna Moloda and she is not an emergency doctor, but a plastic surgeon. The Med-Prestige rescue service has therefore no longer been active since 2023. The company sold this vehicle in 2024 with the requirement to remove the name, its founder explained to slidstvo.info.

There is also no evidence that the house is a “torture chamber” for Ukrainian soldiers. The Ukrainian National Guard rejected Moloda's statement that one of the men had a broken spine. All four injured soldiers were able to reach the ambulance on their own, a spokesman said. It is still unclear how the men sustained their injuries.

The distraught-looking teenager presented in the posts as evidence that minors are being held on the site also appears in other video recordings. They show a boy sitting on the wall in front of the house and throwing stones at the area. This boy's hairstyle and clothing match those of the boy in the viral pictures.

One of the videos comes from journalist Francis Farrell, who works for the English-language Ukrainian media Kyiv Independent. According to his own statement, he was there himself and writes: "By the way, this is the boy who was later taken out in shock. People kept handing him bricks and he kept throwing them. No minors were kept there."

Contrary to what was portrayed in the widespread articles, the young person was apparently not a prisoner. According to the Ukrainian child protection agency, he came to the building because of the protests. The boy apparently fell from the wall during the protests and ended up on the grounds of the house. However, it is unclear what exactly happened afterward before he was led outside wrapped in the blanket.

The protests and the background to them are now also a concern for the Ukrainian authorities. It is clear that the protests in front of the apartment building did not "take place without influence," said Kyrylo Budanov, head of the Ukrainian presidential office, on television the day after the incident. He announced that people involved would be punished. "The Prosecutor General's Office and the relevant bodies have already launched an objective investigation," said Budanov.

Ukrainian authorities suspect that the protests were deliberately organized. So far there is no evidence of possible Russian involvement in the organization. However, disinformation networks close to Russia seized on the incidents and spread misleading representations. For example, RT presenter Rick Sanchez writes on X that the boy was "kept in a basement for a month."

“The story has been massively inflated by pro-Kremlin reports,” Alice Lee, senior analyst at NewsGuard focusing on Russian influence, told the Kyiv Independent.

Valentyna Moloda has now been arrested. A court ordered her to be in custody for 60 days. According to the Ukrainian news agency Ukrainian News Agency, she is accused of obstructing the activities of the armed forces, as well as disseminating information about military sites and organizing mass unrest. Moloda denies the allegations.

According to t-online, the domestic secret service SSU also announced that "correspondence with third parties" had been discovered on Moloda's cell phone in which she discussed scenarios for unauthorized actions against the Ukrainian military.

According to Russian exile media Meduza, a court also ordered Tetiana Kireieva to be in pre-trial detention. She is therefore an acquaintance of the soldier Andrij Kuleshov, who is said to have been housed in the building. According to her own statements, she wanted to ensure that the man received medical treatment and therefore turned to Moloda. The investigators, however, accuse Kireieva of helping to organize the protests and of instructing Moloda on October 30 to get the soldier out of the base. Kireieva has not yet commented publicly on this.

What is certain is that the house was actually used to accommodate soldiers. According to National Guard commander Olexander Pivnenko, it serves as a makeshift barracks. The documents of conscripted soldiers and deserters would be checked there and then sent to a training area.

There are different reports on the number of soldiers housed in the building, ranging from 14 to 26. According to consistent reports, four injured soldiers were medically examined. How they sustained their injuries has not yet been conclusively clarified.

The First "Azov" Corps of the Ukrainian National Guard stated on Telegram that the National Guard command has taken the investigation into this matter under its control. “If it turns out that unlawful acts of violence were committed on the premises of the barracks, the guilty will receive a just punishment,” the statement said.

The Ukrainian State Investigation Office is also investigating possible attacks by military personnel. This includes, among other things, the accommodation of the soldiers and possible mistreatment. The Ukrainian military ombudsman is also checking whether the rights of the men affected were violated.

The Ukrainian parliament's human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said he had called on all law enforcement agencies to clarify, among other things, the "legal basis" for housing the soldiers in the house.

In fact, men of military age are often recruited against the express will of men in Ukraine. The human rights organization Amnesty International writes in its report 2025/2026 on Ukraine: "Employees of the draft authority (TZK) continued to violently arrest men of military age in public spaces in order to conscript them into military service. Videos emerged showing the use of violence by TZK employees, and there were also reports of physical and other abuse and even deaths." However, it is unclear whether the men in the house were men who were forcibly recruited.

There are also no general indications of the systematic use of torture. However, Russian prisoners of war reported ill-treatment during their capture and transport by Ukrainian forces before their arrival at official internment camps to the human rights organization Amnesty International and the UN. Amnesty International visited two Ukrainian prison camps in April and September 2025. The prisoners expressed minor complaints about the conditions in the camps, such as the limited food selection in the camp shop.

The UN has made serious allegations against Russia. Russia's "widespread and systematic torture and ill-treatment" of detained Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war continued, said Deputy Secretary-General for Human Rights Claudia Fuentes Julio. According to media reports, as of December 2025, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office documented a total of 322 cases in which Russian forces executed Ukrainian prisoners of war.

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Former prisoners also reported to Amnesty International about systematic torture, ill-treatment, malnutrition and denied medical care, some of which resulted in death.

Russia continued to deny international observers access to the prisoners and withdrew from the European Convention Against Torture on November 1, 2026. This means that independent control of Russian prisons by the Anti-Torture Committee is no longer possible.