Claims of a Ukrainian ‘torture chamber’ went viral. What really happened? 

Petropavlivska-Borshchagivka, Ukraine – A woman wearing a crisp new paramedic’s uniform and impeccable makeup kneels on the ground in front of several police officers guarding the rusty gates of a two-storey house. She begs, yells and curses, claiming that four forcibly conscripted men are being held in the building in the tranquil suburb of Petropavlivska-Borshchagivka, outside the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

One of the men has already died, claims the woman, who was later identified as Valentyna Moloda, a 49-year-old nurse who once worked at a plastic surgery clinic and has never been authorised to practise as a paramedic.

The ambulance she arrived in carries the logos of a private medical company that reportedly stopped operating in 2023. A woman from Moloda’s “ambulance team” livestreams the scene as a crowd swells, joining in her chants demanding access to what she calls a “torture chamber.”

“I’m on my knees, let me get to them,” Moloda screams, claiming that “armed people” allegedly “torture” 40 people inside who had evaded the draft.

Her claims resonate with people at the impromptu rally, in a country where conscription officers have become reviled public servants due to their sometimes brutal tactics.

Protesters lob eggs at police and throw tomatoes at the house. The crowd grows to 500 people, with many clashing with officers until midnight.

Clashes and counterclaims

Officials say that Moloda’s “rescue mission” on Monday afternoon – one of the most polarising scandals in Ukraine – was fake and required preparation.

But it had already gone viral online, with tens of thousands of people around the world lamenting Ukraine’s handling of conscription.

Glenn Diesen, a pro-Kremlin political analyst from Norway, shared a video and a photo on X of a teenager who fell while trying to film the house from the fence, claiming the boy was a victim of “great outrage and riots in Ukraine against the henchmen of [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy and NATO.” His post has been widely shared.

Three days before Monday’s incident, Moloda and her driver “conducted a reconnaissance” of the house, Ukraine’s Chief of Staff Kyrylo Budanov said on Tuesday.

A former top military intelligence officer and one of Ukraine’s most popular and trusted public figures, Budanov interacted with Moloda at the time of the standoff.

Several young men clashed with police and tried to kick the doors of the house open until officers let Moloda and her team inside.

She came back minutes later to proclaim that she had just seen a man on the brink of death, another with a broken spine and one who was so badly beaten he was unable to talk.

“There’s blood on the mattresses,” she yelled, showing someone photos of the alleged victims on her phone, while the scene was livestreamed. “They [urinate] in a bottle.”

But careful observers would have noticed the videos were tagged as having been shot on Saturday. The crowd, however, kept growing, damaging police cars and clashing with officers.

Budanov arrived about six hours after Moloda started her livestream, and said that the besieged house on Solnichna Street had been used by the Azov Brigade, a former volunteer militia group of far-right nationalists and football fans that helped repel pro-Russian separatists in southeastern Ukraine in 2014.

Azov said apprehended deserters were kept in the house, while Azov’s commander Denys Prokopenko called the scandal a “sabotage behind the lines that discredits Ukrainian servicemen and creates a narrative that benefits Russia”.

The group has been accused of neo-Nazi sympathies and torturing war prisoners. The United States Department of State banned it from using US-supplied weaponry between 2014 and 2024, but it grew into a military force and became part of Ukraine’s National Guard. Its founder, Andriy Biletsky, led this year’s “Operation Vivaldi” to push Russian forces out of several strategic areas in eastern Ukraine.

After Budanov’s arrival, four men were allowed to walk out of the house into a bus, including the one Moloda claimed could not move because of a broken spine. The angry crowd did not allow the bus to leave.

‘Unfortunately, people believed that woman’

Al Jazeera visited Petropavlivska-Borshchagivka and talked to more than a dozen residents, who insisted on full or partial anonymity because Monday’s scandal has become so politicised.

“Both sides are wrong,” an elderly man who only gave his first name, Serhiy, told Al Jazeera, standing next to his wife outside a supermarket.

“Azov shouldn’t have kept their people there, and the fake doctor shouldn’t have started all this noise,” he said.

His wife signalled him to stop talking and ushered him away.

Locals laughed off comparisons some have made between Monday’s incident and the massive 2013-2014 protests on Maidan Square in central Kyiv that toppled pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanykovych.

“This definitely wasn’t a mini-Maidan,” 17-year-old Mykola told Al Jazeera, a short distance from the house. “Unfortunately, people believed that woman and flocked here.”

Most of the locals called the incident a “provocation”.

Only one man in his 30s said that Moloda “tried to help” and should not have been apprehended on Tuesday.

Moloda was arrested and is being held in custody for 60 days without bail.

Prosecutors said they found evidence proving that she had at least once carried out “rescue services” as a fake paramedic for 107,000 hryvnia ($2,355).

The relatives of a deserter, Andriy Kuleshov, allegedly hired Moloda for about $7,000 to get him out of the Azov house, Pavlo Kurchenko, a senior Azov officer, told the media outlet Ukrainska Pravda.

Kuleshov is listed in Myrotvorets – Ukrainian for “peacemaker” – a controversial online database of alleged anti-Ukrainian figures, for crossing into separatist-controlled areas in southeastern Ukraine multiple times in 2015-2021, where his brother lives.

“[Moloda] wanted to create a political scandal,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Kyiv-based Penta think tank, told Al Jazeera. “She is also suspected of ties to Russian intelligence. So far, there’s no confirmation of that, but Russia has used this scandal in its interests.”

It did – with the help of pro-Russia Ukrainians.

“People are being kidnapped and tortured. Some are sold to military units, others – to their relatives. The weaker ones simply die of torture and confinement conditions,” Artyom Dmitruk, a former Ukrainian lawmaker with a pro-Russian party who fled for Italy in 2024, said in televised remarks.

The scandal “answers the question about why Russia needs the special military operation, to uproot the resurgent neo-Nazism in Ukraine,” said Mikhail Sheremev, a “lawmaker” in Russia-annexed Crimea.

Violence and corruption

Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion prompted a wave of volunteers to join Ukraine’s military, with tens of thousands enlisting across the country, often travelling to other regions because conscription offices near their homes were overwhelmed.

But after heavy losses and reports of poor planning, corruption and the cruelty of some officers, the number of volunteers fell dramatically.

Since 2023, conscription officers have been combing public places in search of people trying to avoid the draft. They have frequently forced them into their vans, often resorting to intimidation, beatings and torture, as Al Jazeera has reported, along with witnesses and human rights groups.

The officers claim there is no other way to mobilise the tens of thousands of men needed on the frontline to repel Russian forces.

The violence has led to corrupt practices.

As of August this year, 76 conscription officers had been arrested for accepting bribes of up to tens of thousands of dollars, stashing huge sums, and buying expensive properties in Ukraine and abroad.

Some draft-dodgers have secured fake exemptions from medical doctors, while others fled to neighbouring countries, either through bribes or by crossing the border without documentation.

Some forcibly drafted men secured the services of “fake ambulances”, according to prosecutors and police.

In 2025, border guards in the southwestern region of Zakarpattia detained a fake ambulance crew of three men who tried to take a person evading the draft to Romania for $10,000.