Investigative journalists ID surgeons who burned the inscription “Glory to Russia” onto the stomach of a Ukrainian POW

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative project Schemes (Skhemy) has identified two Russian doctors who they suspect mutilated Ukrainian serviceman Andrii Pereverzev.

Pereverzev returned from captivity in the summer of 2025 bearing scars on his abdomen that read “Glory to Russia,” along with the letter Z. The Ukrainian POW had undergone surgery while in Russian custody, and the Russian pro-war symbols were burned into his skin while he was unconscious during the procedure.

According to the investigation, the operation was performed by abdominal surgeon Yury Kuznetsov and colorectal surgeon Andrei Kryachko, doctors from the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.

Pereverzev joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 2023 and fought with the 79th Air Assault Brigade in the Donetsk Region, on the Pokrovsk axis. In February 2024, he was wounded and captured, after which he was taken to occupied Donetsk. He said he suffered multiple shrapnel wounds to his abdomen and had part of his rectum removed. Pereverzev said he did not see the doctors who operated on him, only a nurse who administered anesthesia. Later, however, he heard from medical staff that the surgeon was from Russia. Skhemy journalists found that Pereverzev’s operation took place on Feb. 24, 2024 at the Donetsk Clinical Territorial Medical Association (DOKTMO), the largest hospital in Donbas.

By reviewing the hospital’s social media pages and reports aired by local television channels, the journalists determined that a group of Russian doctors calling themselves “Friends of Donbas Medicine” had begun working at DOKTMO on a permanent basis. The doctors themselves said they operate on captured Ukrainian soldiers, along with wounded Russian servicemen. The initiative to create the group has been attributed to State Duma MP Badma Bashankaev, himself a surgeon from Kalmykia.

On the day Pereverzev was operated on, Kuznetsov and Kryachko were on duty at the Donetsk hospital, according to posts on their social media accounts and data obtained by Skhemy on border crossings into the Donetsk Region. The project's journalists were able to contact Kuznetsov. He initially said he had not been at the Donetsk hospital on Feb. 24, then said he had delivered humanitarian aid there but did not perform any surgeries.