HARKIV, Ukraine (AP) — A group of Sri Lankans held captive by Russian forces in an agricultural factory in eastern Ukraine said Saturday that they were beaten and abused for months before escaping on foot as the Russians withdrew from the Kharkiv region this month. 

Recounting their ordeal to reporters in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, one of the seven Sri Lankans said he was shot in the foot; another had his toenail ripped off and was slammed in the head with the butt of a rifle. 

Ukrainian officials described their treatment as torture.

“Every day we were cleaning toilets and bathrooms,” Dilukshan Robertclive, one of the former captives, said in English. “Some days Russians came and beat our people, our Sri Lanka people.”

Four of the seven were medical students in the city of Kupiansk and three were working there when Russian forces poured across the border in late February and occupied large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine.

The group said they were captured at the first checkpoint out of Kupiansk and then taken to Vovchansk, near the border with Russia, where they were held in the factory with around 20 Ukrainians.

“They took our passports, other documents, phones, clothes, and locked us up in a room," said Sharujan Gianeswaran, speaking in Tamil to an Associated Press journalist by phone. "There were also Ukrainian people with us, and they were questioned and sent away in 10 days, 15 days, or one month. With us, they never spoke, because they could not understand our language.”

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