Ukrainian man accuses Russians and Chechen troops of mock executions and days of torture

Fresh allegations of atrocities by occupying troops have emerged as a Ukrainian man described three days and nights of torture, mock executions and the disappearance of fellow prisoners during his captivity by Russian forces in the town of Borodyanka.

Petro Titenko, 45, told the Guardian of his three nights of hell at the hands of Russian and Chechen soldiers after he was picked up for breaking curfew, during which he was beaten, forced to kneel in what he was told was his grave and had bullets shot at his head and feet.

In Druzhnya, the couple hunkered down day and night in their cellar, aware, they said, that any civilians outside were being killed. But on the evening of 18 March Titenko decided to try to slip out after curfew to check on his brother less than three miles away.

Halfway there, at about 6.30pm, three Russian soldiers armed with machine guns emerged from the woods and accused him of giving Russian locations away to the Ukrainian army. He was searched, his hands were tied behind his back and a sack was roughly put over his head.

Titenko said he was taken into the woods and tied with rope to the back of a tank which the soldiers turned on so that he breathed in the fumes from the shoulder-height exhaust pipe.

After 30 minutes the engine was turned off and he was left there. Unable to move, Titenko stood all night in the freezing cold, thinking only the worst.

It was a false and mocking promise. The two prisoners were loaded on top of the tank and driven for an hour, Titenko said, struggling to contain his emotion as he recalled the conversation he heard between two of his captors.