Twin brothers Ivan and Anton Shtepa and 23-year-old Denis Shum were detained without any explanation by police officers in Gornostaevka in November 2023. This was previously told to ASTRA by distant relatives of the young people and other sources. After that, none of them have ever been seen again. No official documents on the reasons for the detention have been provided to the relatives so far. No authority can explain to relatives where the young people are and whether they are still alive. 

According to ASTRA, on November 20, 27-year-old Ruslan Rusnak was also detained in Gornostaevka. On the same day, after hours of interrogation Rusnak died right in the building of the department of Ministry of Internal Affairs of the village. The same police officers who detained Shtepa and Shum confessed to his torture. Later a 47-year-old policeman from Lyubertsy, Senior police Lieutenant Igor Pimenov, confessed that he had tortured Ruslan to death. Pimenov said that he had committed torture together with 4 other policemen: the so-called “chief of the department of Gornostaevsky region”, police Colonel Andrei Polevshchikov; his deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Merkurov V. A; the head of the Criminal Investigation Department, police captain Plyukhin V. M. and the police Major Denisov A. B. All of them were detained.

Earlier, the Ukrainian Center for Investigative Journalism reported that the twin brothers Ivan and Anton Shtepa, Denis Shum, as well as Alexander Gerchakovsky, a resident of Kakhovka town, and Alexey Grinko, a resident of Lyubimovka town, who were abducted in March, are in the basement of the recreation center in the village Otradovka in the Novotroitsky district of the Kherson region. According to the agency, a torture chamber with solitary confinement cells was created in the basement of the recreation center. The abducted young people are tortured to force them to cooperate with the occupation authorities. Local residents confirmed to journalists that there are civilian prisoners in the chamber.