By Galina Korol | 2025-06-04

KYIV -- Brutality, fear and violence are becoming routine inside Russia's military. The troops punish, torture and kill their own. Videos and firsthand accounts show them beaten, dragged outdoors by comrades or simply "disappeared" for refusing to fight.

One such video, published on May 27 by the I Want To Live project on Telegram, shows Russian soldiers dragging a comrade through the dirt. His crime -- refusing a suicide mission.

I Want To Live is a Ukrainian government hotline that allows Russian troops to surrender.

Commanders can order the killing of a troublesome subordinate or send him into a hopeless frontal assault.

Punished for refusing to stop Ukrainian bullets

"Don't you feel sorry for those other guys who are fighting?" an offscreen voice asks.

What follows is a string of profanities. The Russian, seated on the ground, is then kicked in the face several times.

"Let's drag this [expletive] whore, this [expletive] prostitute. Let's teach this whore a lesson," the voice continues, giving the order to tie the man to a vehicle and then drag him.

The torture on video lasts for more than two minutes. The owners of the channel who posted the video called the violence an "extrajudicial punishment."

The soldier's offense: refusing to go to certain death in a "meat grinder assault" on a well-armed Ukrainian position.

In a military that has no mercy for its own or for adversaries, such defiance is unforgivable.

'Beating, cages and torture'

The video shows not an isolated act of brutality but evidence of a broader pattern of extrajudicial punishment within Russia's military.

Such cruelty has become routine because the system is closed and operates with impunity, Ivan Chuvilyayev, a spokesman for the Idite Lesom (Get Lost) movement, which helps Russian men escape conscription or mobilization, said.

"We know of actual cases and that they're not isolated. Rather, this has become rampant, and there is nothing but violence [in the Russian military]," he told Kontur.

Russian troops often post videos showing beatings, partial burial for a few hours to punish various "offenses," chaining to trees, confinement in cages and forced starvation, said Vitaly Matvienko, a staff member of Ukraine's Coordinating Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War and spokesman for I Want To Live.

Commanders rely on coercion to sustain attacks. Men who have fought for years, or who only recently were freed from prison or joined for some promised large payoff, are not always eager to die, he told Kontur.

"A Russian infantryman has no choice: either he goes on the attack, or he's thrown 'into the pit' or a basement, and he's beaten or simply 'zeroed out,'" he told Kontur, using a term for being killed.

'Zeroing out' as a tool of discipline

Commanders play the decisive role in the process of "zeroing out," Mikhail Liberov, coordinator of the Movement of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service in Russia (MCO), told Kontur.

Russian military hierarchy "does not allow extrajudicial punishments by peers without approval from a superior," he said.

This claim is supported by a radio intercept obtained by Ukrainian military intelligence and posted May 26 on Telegram.

The recording reveals what Ukrainian officials describe as "the favorite motivational technique" of Russian commanders: the threat of execution.

"Anyone who gets in the way, anyone who with their whining or any actions interferes with orders being carried out must be zeroed out mercilessly. We'll zero out a couple of such guys, [expletive], and all the others will keep quiet, [expletive]," a commander from the occupying forces ruthlessly orders in the published recording.

These are not just threats but a sign that extrajudicial killings have been elevated to "disciplinary actions," where commanders have subordinates killed off to frighten others into marching to sure death.

Such methods also serve as a "convenient" way to eliminate unwanted individuals, said Matvienko.

"You can 'zero out' even those who have merely crossed the commander -- the confrontational ones or those who speak out against lawlessness in the unit," he said.

Matvienko cited the case of two Russian drone pilots who reported drug trafficking that their regiment commander had been covering up. In response, the commander sent them to die in a frontal assault. A subsequent investigation found no violations.

"This means that other commanders can also count on impunity even if their crimes become public," Matvienko said.

Arrests without a trial

The Kremlin has effectively legalized the lawlessness, said Liberov.

"Lynchings and extrajudicial punishments in the Russian army are explicitly approved by the General Staff," he said.

Last July, the State Duma passed a law allowing commanders to detain subordinates in Ukraine without a court order for up to 15 days, he said.

The law contradicts Article 22 of the Russian constitution, which limits detention without a court order to 48 hours, but authorities ignore the violation, according to Liberov.

Veterans will take the violence home

Living amid violence and inhumanity will leave lasting scars on Russian veterans who survive the war and return home, researchers say.

Fedir Shchusenko of Kyiv, an instructor of psychological readiness for the NGO Therapy of Win, compared the abuse within Russian ranks to the atrocities that Russian forces inflicted on Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and Irpin.

"How strong must your pull toward evil and sadism be to use it even against those fighting beside you in the trenches?" he said.

"When the enemy isn't nearby, but you still want to bully someone because it's your nature, you target your own."

When those who committed abuses reenter society, "they will bring even more sadism and depravity into society, looking for weaker victims to compensate for their humiliation," said Shchusenko.

The result is a vicious cycle of violence that could poison Russian society for years.