Like other Ukrainian soldiers held at Corrective Colony No. 10 in Russia’s Mordovia region, Pavlo Afisov said he was subjected to excruciating physical and mental abuse: Beaten badly upon arrival and on countless other occasions over more than 18 months at the prison, he said he had dogs set on him while forced to crawl on a cell floor and came close to death when jailers tied a garbage bag over his head.
“It's very scary and unpleasant, because at that moment you lose contact with the outside world and you start to suffocate. You try to rip the bag off with your hands -- they hit you on the hands, they shock you with a stun gun,” Afisov, a marine infantry officer who was captured during the Russian siege of Mariupol in 2022 and returned home in a prisoner exchange in 2024, told Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
At one point, he was taken to a doctor at the prison, which he expected would bring some relief.
Ukrainian marine infantry officer Pavlo Afisov, pictured before his capture by invading Russian forces in 2022, spent a year and a half incarcerated at the Corrective Colony No. 10 in Russa's Mordovia region.
“By then I thought it couldn’t get any worse,” said Afisov, 26. “But when they brought me in… I don’t know, you can’t call him a human being -- he started to wave the stun gun around and shocked me several times. He started threatening me, saying, ‘Come on, hurry up, don’t be stupid.’ He raised his voice very loud. He made himself out to be a great commander and said we were ‘stinking khokhly’” -- a derogatory term for Ukrainians – “who did not deserve decent treatment.”
Oleksandr Savov, a marine who spent six months at the prison, abbreviated as IK-10, was in for a similar surprise when he first encountered the same doctor.
"He stops me, I see he’s in a white coat. I think, ‘He’s a doctor,’” Savov said. “I told him I suspect I have tuberculosis. And he says: ‘What do you shout?’ I didn’t understand -– it was my first time there. And he gives me an electric shock! I stand silent. Again he says, ‘What do you shout?” -- and he shocks me again."
Oleksandr Savov, a Ukrainian marine infantry officer who spent six months at IK-10 prison in Russia's Mordovia region, died on November 16 in Ukraine.
“He started screaming obscenities at me. I asked him what exactly I should shout. He says, ‘Glory to Russian medicine!’ I shout it. And he…hits me with the shocker again,” he said. “I’m looking at him -– he’s in a white coat like a doctor, so why is he so cruel? It was only later that I found out that this was 'Dr. Shocker.'"
Savov, who was suffering from tuberculosis, skin diseases, and lymphedema when he returned to Ukraine in a prisoner exchange in March, died on November 16.
Inmates at IK-10, where hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war have been taken since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, often did not know where they were being held until after their release. But all the former inmates who spoke to Schemes remember “Dr. Shocker,” who was also known to prisoners as “Dr. Evil.”
In an award-winning investigation conducted jointly with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), Schemes determined the identity of the doctor, Ilya Sorokin, whose conduct stood out in the memories of inmates who said they suffered near-constant violence and deprivation -- a regime of abuse that some prisoners did not survive.
Published by RFE/RL in July, the investigation won Editor & Publisher magazine’s 2025 Eppy Award for Best Investigative/Enterprise Feature.
The European Union imposed sanctions on Sorokin in October, citing his “inhumane and degrading treatment” of prisoners of war,” including physical abuse and electrocution.
Unmasking 'Dr. Evil'
To identify Sorokin, Schemes journalists combed through the website of the Mordovia branch of Russia’s Federal Penitentiary Service and examined photos and videos of events attended by medical workers at the numerous prisons in the region.
Schemes also contacted nearly 150 Ukrainians who had been held at IK-10, many of whom recognized Sorokin, who is now 35, from the images. Some weren’t sure, as the doctor who tormented them always wore a medical mask and sometimes a balaclava with a skull painted on it, according to former inmates.
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They Called Him 'Dr. Evil': The Russian Prison Medic Accused Of Torturing Ukrainian POWs
His identity was confirmed when Schemes found a video of a celebration in which Sorokin’s face is clearly visible and -- a crucial clue for the former inmates -- his voice is clearly audible. Afisov and many others recognized it as that of “Dr. Evil.”
"He's there, the bastard, getting aesthetic pleasure from the fact that you're crouching in front of him on all fours, your hands raised, your eyes closed, you have nothing. And…he kicks you between your legs, in the solar plexus, in the liver, hits you with a [rubber baton], shocks you with a stun gun,” Afisov recalled. “And he also says that people like us ‘should be subjected to genocide.’"
Several other former inmates said they were haunted by memories of Sorokin’s conduct.
Yulian Pilipey, a Ukrainian marine infantry company commander, was captured by invading Russian forces in April 2022.
“Every time this doctor comes in, the cell opens, he says: ‘On your knees, bitch.’ Then: ‘[Hold out your] hand, f***.' And he shocks your hand with the stun gun simply because he didn't like something," Yulian Pilipey, a marine infantry company commander from the western city of Rivne who was captured by Russian forces in April 2022, told Schemes.
Ukrainian National Guardsman Mykyta Pikulyk
"When he entered the corridor, it was immediately clear that it was he who entered. He had a style of speech like that of a completely mentally ill person. Because he could shout, then speak calmly -- he would go back and forth quite often,” said Mykyta Pikulyk, a National Guardsman from Zaporizhzhya who was captured while fighting in that region and spent almost a year at IK-10.
“He had duties, but he performed them only for show. He had to come [when called], but how to provide assistance was his personal decision,” Piklulyk said. “When he was asked for pills, he said: "Okay, I'll give you a pill." And to get a pill, you need to stretch your hand through the opening in the door. And he would strike the patients' hands with a stun gun instead of providing medical assistance.”
Sorokin’s reported sadism came against a backdrop of what inmates described as near constant violence and abuse, from being forced to stand in one place from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. to beatings with batons, mallets, and plastic pipes, sexual violence, and mock executions. But the doctor’s alleged actions stood out for some because of his profession.
"I don't know how such a person ended up in the medical field. The guards, the Federal Penitentiary Service employees or the special forces -- everything was clear with them,” Pikulyk told RFE/RL. “But such an attitude from a medical staffer was incomprehensible to us."
In 2022, Sorokin posted a photo on social media of an award he received “for conscientious performance of public duties and active participation in the life of the collective." The diploma-style document states that he works in the medical unit serving IK-10, which was known for allegedly abusive practices years before Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
When Schemes contacted Sorokin, he denied that he worked at the prison and hung up when pressed. He did not pick up a second call and then blocked the contact.
Among other evidence, a human resources officer at a regional medical unit confirmed to Schemes that Sorokin was employed at the prison and would return to work there after serving in the military.
Death In Mordovia
Valentin Polyanskiy, a marine infantry officer, told RFE/RL that his cellmate, Volodymyr Yukhymenko, began to suffer mental problems after he was incarcerated, but that the guards “thought he was pretending” in a ploy for release and “beat him as brutally as possible. He was just green. At first purple, then completely green.”
Volodymyr Yukhymenko was one of several Ukrainian soldiers who have died at the IK-10 prison in Russia's Mordovia region.
At one point, jailers beat one of Yukhymenko’s ears so badly that “the cartilage flew out completely. That is, it had no frame, it was just lying there, just skin,” he said. As his cellmate’s condition worsened, Polanskiy turned to Sorokin for help: “We told him, ‘Look at his ear.’ And he said, “Well, duty officer, hit the [expletive] in the ear.”
Yukhymenko was later tied to his bed -- in a sitting position until he could no longer sit up, and then lying down. “His eyes were closed and he…could barely speak. You had to put your ear to his lips to hear anything,” Polyanskiy told RFE/RL. “He would say, ‘It hurts so much.’”
“The most terrible thing for me was to hear that they didn’t provide medical care, but tied him up,” Yukhymenko’s widow, Yevhenia Lastovetska, told Schemes. When his body was returned to Ukraine, she said, “It was a shock to all of us…. I couldn’t say right away that it was my Volodya.”
Volodymyr Yukhymenko’s widow, Yevhenia Lastovetska. "It seems to me that as long as I live, I will wait for him to come home,” she told Schemes.
“I once studied the years 1932-33 in history,” she said, referring to the man-made Stalin-era famine known in Ukraine, where it killed millions of people, as the Holodomor.
Lastovetska said she recognized her husband’s right hand, which had been damaged before he was captured, and a DNA test came back a “99.99 percent match.”
Still, she said, “I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to and still don’t want to believe it was him. It seems to me that as long as I live, I will wait for him to come home.”
Sources in Ukrainian law enforcement agencies said they were aware of the deaths of at least two Ukrainian servicemen at IK-10 in 2023 and at least two more in 2024, with causes including pneumonia, exhaustion, prolonged malnutrition, and starvation.
Hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers remain there.