Volodymyr Boriak

Working title of PhD: Atrocity Perpetration and Carceral Violence under Military Occupation: Empirical Research on Survivor Testimonies from Russian-Occupied Prisons in Ukraine

Institution: University of Edinburgh

Funding Source: SGSSS

Full or part-time: Full time

Year Commenced: 2026

Supervisors: Andy Aydın-Aitchison (Edinburg) and Laura Piacentini (Strathclyde)

Synopsis:

My PhD investigates atrocity perpetration and carceral violence in Ukrainian prisons under Russian military occupation since February 2022. While violence against civilians and prisoners of war has received considerable attention, the experiences of civilian prisoners who were already incarcerated when their institutions came under Russian control remain largely unexplored. The project asks: What conditions enabled mass violence in Ukrainian prisons under Russian occupation, and what do survivors’ experiences reveal about the dynamics of perpetration in civilian detention?

The research examines perpetration across macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, considering how Russian authoritarian and penal practices, wartime ideology and propaganda, institutional collapse, impunity, obedience, dehumanisation, and individual agency interacted to transform prisons into environments of systematic violence. It also explores whether incarceration itself became an instrument of warfare, territorial domination, and identity erasure.

Methodologically, the project is primarily qualitative. Its empirical core comprises more than 300 unpublished survivor testimonies collected by human rights organisations from prisoners detained in occupied Ukrainian facilities. Using qualitative thematic analysis, I will identify recurring patterns of abuse and connect individual experiences to broader institutional and political dynamics. The research will combine this with comparative analysis of pre-invasion Ukrainian prison conditions and the treatment of Ukrainian prisoners of war, supplemented by multilingual open-source research and, where necessary, trauma-informed follow-up interviews with survivors and NGO researchers.

Keywords: Atrocity perpetration, Carceral violence, Military occupation

Recent Publications: 

Zabyelina Y. and Boriak. V. (2026). War behind bars: Civilian prisoners and carceral warfare in Russia-occupied Ukrainian territories, The British Journal of Criminology, 2026;, azag018, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azag018