Samuil Proskuryakov

In late February 2021, the Primorsky Odesa Court sentenced Serhii Sternenko and Ruslan Demchuk to seven years and three months imprisonment on charges of robbery and illegal possession of weaponry. The court agreed with the prosecution that in 2015, the two men kidnapped and tortured a politician from the pro-Russian ‘Rodina’ party, Serhiy Shcherbyn.

Conversion therapy is a practice that stems from anti-intellectual premises, the idea that homosexuals, bisexuals, transgender or gender non-conforming invidiuals are morally, spiritually, or even physically ‘sick’ and incompetent, and they need to be ‘cured.’ This can take the form of individual or group consultations, as well as much more invasive ‘treatments’, such as sleep deprivation, antipsychotic prescriptions, electroshock therapy, and even ‘corrective’ rape.

Russian human rights activists, convicts, and their families say that Corrective Colony No. 14 in Nizhegorodskaya Oblast, Russia, is a torture chamber. The man responsible: former colony superintendent Vasily Voloshin. In 2015, he was placed on an international most-wanted list — not for torture, but rather for minor financial crimes: illegally cutting down a forest and theft of prison property. Voloshin first hid in North Cyprus, then moved to Ukraine – where he was arrested.