Russian mass media, as well as pro-Russian bloggers and Telegram channels, write dozens of messages refuting "fake Ukrainian propaganda" about torture centers where teeth were pulled. Russian propaganda accuses the Ukrainian police and the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine of spreading this fake.
Indeed, in a tweet by the Ministry of Defense, the torture chamber in the village of Pisky-Radkivski with the items found there - a gas mask, a box with extracted teeth and dentures - was called a "mini Auschwitz". That is, the report gives the impression that the Russian military tortured Ukrainians, pulling out their teeth, as the Nazis used to do in concentration camps.
Taras Topolya, a singer and now a soldier, drew the same parallel by comparing two photos - a black and white one from a German concentration camp, on which the gold crowns of the murdered people are visible, and a color photo from the Pisky-Radkivski torture chamber. Some Ukrainian mass media, referring to Taras Topolya, published news in which they claimed that the Russians pulled out the teeth of those who were abused in the torture chamber, but the Ukrainian police didn`t make such a statement.
On the contrary, it clearly stated that the police had evidence of torture using gas masks, as well as burying people alive in the ground. "A dildo, a box with torn dentures were also found in the torture chamber. Investigators and prosecutors are working to establish all the facts that happened in this torture chamber," said Serhii Bolvinov, head of the National Police Investigation Department in the Kharkiv region. So the police didn`t claim that the dentures belonged to the victims of the Russian military.
The day after the gruesome discovery, German journalists from the Bild tabloid found a local dentist in the village, who told them that the prostheses belonged to him, as he kept the removed prostheses of his patients. He also said that the Russians robbed his house, and he thinks they may have taken the box of prosthetics because they thought they were gold or to intimidate the Ukrainians who were being held in the torture chamber. After Bild's material appeared, some Ukrainian publications deleted the news in which they claimed that the Russians tortured prisoners by pulling out their teeth. But mostly, the Ukrainian mass media immediately wrote that the investigation is trying to establish all the circumstances of the crime.
Russian propaganda uses this case to prove that the Russians don`t torture Ukrainians at all, and every terrible find in the de-occupied territories is a fake. For this, for example, they kept quiet that in the Bild article residents talk about screams from the torture chambers, as well as about a person who was subjected to torture. That is, journalists don`t doubt that the Russians are torturing prisoners, civilians, or the military.