Lawyer: Lukyanivske detention center turning into a “death trap” for inmates during strikes

Kyiv’s Lukyanivske pre-trial detention center becomes a “death trap” for inmates during missile strikes on the area: people remain locked in their cells with no access to shelter.

Lawyer Tetyana Kozachenko wrote about this on Facebook in the wake of the latest strikes on the Lukyanivka neighborhood.

According to Kozachenko, hundreds of detainees whose guilt has not yet been proven in court are affected. During the strikes, they cannot go down to a shelter and, in her words, “simply wait in their cells for their death lottery.”

The lawyer believes that under martial law, pre-trial detention should be used only in genuinely urgent cases. In addition to the threat to life during strikes, Kozachenko also criticized the overall functioning of Ukraine’s pre-trial detention system.

To support her words, the lawyer described a former client who was held in the detention center for an extended period in order to coerce her into incriminating herself. The woman was moved to overcrowded cells and brought to court hearings in an exhausted state — covered in insect bites and after sleepless nights.

“If I had known what I would have to go through and how long it would last — I might not have been able to endure it,” the client said after her release.

According to Kozachenko, the right to a fair trial loses its meaning if the state cannot even guarantee a person the chance to live to see that trial.