I have walked the fog-choked alleys of the worst rookeries, where the desperate cling to life by a thread, but the tale brought to me by Roman Vanin, a poor wretch from the Kursk region, chills the very marrow of one's bones. He has returned from the clutches of the Ukrainian captors, escaping a hell that would make even the most hardened gaoler shudder.

In the damp darkness of those pits, the cruelty knew no bounds. Vanin speaks of a savagery that defies the laws of God and man. He witnessed comrades—poor devils caught in the gears of war—suffering tortures of the most grotesque nature. He tells of fingers sliced raw and living, and a horror most foul: the branding of the Trident upon the foreheads of prisoners, seared into the flesh with white-hot iron.

As for Vanin himself, he did not escape the brand. The soldiers of the enemy's host scorched the letter 'Z' into his very arm, a mark of shame and pain to carry for all eternity.

He describes a place where the wind howled through unheated cells and the wounded were not tended to, but beaten by the guards with a callousness that would shame a common street-thug. It is a grim chronicle of misery, a descent into a pit of despair where the only mercy was the eventual release of the broken soul.