Ukraine Arrests Woman Over Torture Claims at Kyiv House
A woman who claimed that men evading the military draft were being violently assaulted in a house near Kyiv has been arrested in Ukraine, according to Al Jazeera. She has been identified as Valentyna Moloda, a 49-year-old nurse who once worked at a plastic surgery clinic.
The house is in Petropavlivska-Borshchagivka, a suburb outside Kyiv. Moloda claimed that 40 people who had evaded the draft, the process by which the state calls citizens up for military service, were being tortured inside by armed people. Her claims spread widely online before the case drew official attention.
Moloda arrived at the house in an ambulance bearing the logos of a private medical company that reportedly stopped operating in 2023. She has never been authorised to practise as a paramedic, an emergency medical worker. Videos she presented as evidence of victims were tagged as having been shot on Saturday.
After she entered the house, Moloda claimed she saw a man on the brink of death, another with a broken spine, and a third so badly beaten he could not speak. Police officers let her and her team inside after clashes at the gates. Earlier, a crowd outside the house had grown to 500 people and clashed with officers until midnight.
Ukraine's Chief of Staff, Kyrylo Budanov, said Moloda and her driver had conducted reconnaissance of the house three days before the Monday incident, which was November 2, 2026. Clashes between law enforcement and residents had taken place that day outside a recruitment dormitory on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Ukraine's interior minister said the allegations of torture at the military dormitory were fake, according to Reuters. Euronews reported that the facility at the centre of the allegations was a National Guard building near Kyiv.
