A view of an abandoned military position not far from city of Balakliya, Kharkiv region on September 18, 2022, recently recaptured by the Ukrainian army following the retreat of Russian troops
When Russians took over the city of Balakliya, eastern Ukraine, they turned the central police station into a base for brutality.
During the six months it spent under enemy occupation, scores of local residents were locked in overcrowded cells in the basement. Survivors told of being dragged to a torture chamber where they were beaten, electrocuted and forced to endure mock executions.
The interrogations were carried out by officials from Russia's Federal Security Service, according to documents retrieved after the town's recapture last month during Ukraine's stunning counter-offensive.
Yet the interrogators were helped by local stooges - such as Oleg Kalaida, the jobless former head of security at a chicken farm who found himself elevated to chief of police after agreeing to serve as a Kremlin henchman.
The horror stories emerging in liberated towns such as Balakliya, a railway hub of 30,000 people, have become hideously familiar in recent months: of Russian atrocities, mass graves, torture and war crimes.
Yet the uncomfortable truth is that some Ukrainians have been assisting Vladimir Putin's war crimes and theft of their land.
Kyiv has already opened investigations into
1,309 suspected traitors and launched 450 prosecutions of collaborators accused of betraying their own nation and neighbours.
Others are being tracked down and slaughtered by resistance fighters. A list passed to this newspaper by a Kyiv government source identifies
29 such retribution killings, with 13 more assassination attempts that left some targets wounded.
'A hunt has been declared on collaborators and
their life is not protected by law,' said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry.
'Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.'
Comment: Add another knock on the boondoggle of the electric car: