Phone call to Putin

The phone call to Putin (Russian: звонок Путину, romanized: zvonok Putinu) is a slang term used by some Russian police departments for torture method which consists of administering electric shocks to the person's earlobes, nose, and/or genitals.^[1][2][3][4] According to Amnesty International, torture with electric shocks by security forces and prison, jail, and penal colony guards is common in Russia.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} An example of a device used for this purpose is a TA-57 telephone.^[11][12]

This method was profiled in publications describing a case of Aleksei Mikheyev who was falsely accused in 2006 of murder while his alleged victim was alive and well.^[1] After surviving the alleged "phone call" torture, he jumped out of a third-floor window to escape his tormentors. The fall resulted in a spinal cord injury that rendered Mikheyev a paraplegic.^[13] His case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France and became notable as "the first serious victory in a case of torture" brought to the Court against Russian government.^[3][14]

Since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 there have been many reports of torture by Russian forces with the use of electric shocks.^{[15][16][17][18][19][20]} Oksana Minenko from Kherson reported that Russian soldiers tortured her with electric shocks and called the torture ‘a phone call to Zelensky’.^[21]

See also

• Tucker Telephone