‼️Russian commanders are slaughtering their own soldiers like cattle - with impunity.

How long will the soldiers tolerate this?

“I honestly couldn’t imagine that something like this was possible. In the year 2025, a war of the future, drones—and they’re just destroying their own people like cattle. This is genocide,” says a Russian soldier codenamed “Kurgan” in an investigative report by Verstka.

To grasp the level of lawlessness in the Russian Army, read these excerpts from the article:

“Zeroing out” — that’s the term Russian soldiers use for the killings of their own comrades. Executions as punishment, for intimidation, or simply to settle personal scores.

The soldiers who spoke to Verstka say that “zeroing out” doesn’t just mean direct killings.

A popular way to get rid of an unwanted soldier is to send him on an assault where survival is nearly impossible—often without a bulletproof vest and without a weapon.

This type of “zeroing out” is widespread in many MoD units. For example, in the 114th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade.

One of the brigade commanders is Colonel Igor Istratiy, callsign “Said,” who is both a Hero of Russia and a Hero of the so-called “DNR.”

Soldiers describe the well-known commander as personally issuing orders for executions and encouraging torture.

Yuri, who served in the 114th Brigade, describes how they were sent on assaults without weapons or equipment, while “Said” told them that soldiers had to “obtain everything they needed in battle themselves.”

“Just so you understand, we went in with four magazines of 120 rounds each against two or three platoons,” the Verstka source recalls.

“And they met us with tanks, Grads, Shmels, and RPGs. That first battle in the winter of 2023, when we were just entering Krasnohorivka—there were 47 of us. Only 5 made it down into the village itself. 3 minutes of fighting.”

“You know, over there… the things that happen… You never know who you’ll take a bullet from: your own guys or the Khokhols,” says serviceman Dmitry from the same brigade.

***
“They just beat a guy from my platoon to death by smashing his head against the floor. Because he drank vodka after a combat mission.

I mean, we’d been sitting on the front line for a month without communication, without food, and almost everyone was either 200 or 300.

We drank water from puddles, f*cking slept in water, and shit. Then we finally got pulled back for rest, all grown men, so yeah, we had a bit to drink, and they started chewing us out like we were some kind of teenagers. So the guy pushed back.”

Further, as a soldier codenamed “Kurgan” tells Verstka, commanders “Kemer” and “Dudka” started beating his comrade and “smashed his head against a concrete slab.”

Then they threw him into a pit. “He was already dying there, something was leaking from his head, foam coming from his mouth, convulsions. ‘Akula’ later said to shoot him,” says “Kurgan.”

***
In June 2025, an assault trooper from the 80th Tank Regiment, callsign “Fiksa,” refused to carry out the task of “exposing enemy firing positions” without a bulletproof vest or weapon.

Soldiers call this role a “beacon”—when a soldier is turned into live bait, sent forward to provoke the enemy into opening fire thus revealing their exact location.

“You just run in one direction, with a blocking unit behind you that won’t let you come back. Your only chance of surviving is to get wounded and be captured by the Khokhols,” one of the soldiers explains.

Upon hearing “Fiksa’s” refusal to serve as a “beacon,” the commander of the assault company “V” Kemer ordered him to be beaten.

The torture was filmed on video: they beat him with fists, sticks, and a stun gun.

“Yeah, that’s Fiksa on the video. Kemer’s men beat him half to death, and then he shot him. They buried him in a forest,” a comrade with the callsign “Kurgan” told Verstka. His family was told that the man had allegedly deserted his unit.

Photo: Fiksa getting beaten
🔽 ***
When speaking about the 139th Separate Assault Battalion and its former commander, 35-year-old Colonel Kurbek Karaev with the callsign “Kurot,” Verstka’s sources claim that he used drones to execute his fellow servicemen.

“I saw how they push the guys forward—no f*cks given. If you don’t go, they’ll take you out.
If you drop somewhere, a little bird will f*ck you up—your own guys, for f*ck’s sake.
They’ll track you down and blast you. That’s the orders they give,” complains contract soldier Vladimir Oskolkov from the 139th Assault Battalion in a video about executions right on the battlefield.

He sent videos recorded at the front to his sister and complained about service conditions to the Berdyansk military commandant’s office.

After the video was published, Oskolkov was taken away in an unknown direction.

***
“Drone drops” on their own men have also been witnessed by former prisoners who became contract soldiers in 2023.

Why exactly commanders risk losing UAVs, distract their operators from combat tasks, waste ammunition, and zero out their own soldiers in front of many witnesses—soldiers themselves don’t know for sure.

One of the popular assumptions among Verstka‘s sources is that it's done to prevent a wounded assault trooper from falling into captivity or reaching a hospital, where he might reveal “too much” about what’s happening at the front lines.

***

Soldiers also classify torture in pits and basements as “zeroing out”—because it most often ends with the victim’s death.

Mobilized soldier Alexey recalls how comrades who got drunk after returning to the rear following three or four months in combat positions were sent to pits.

“We called it a ‘bath’: a chance to wash up there, get yourself in order for a day. Well, naturally, on that day a guy would find alcohol, get totally plastered, and the next day he had to go back in, but he was useless. So he got sent to the pit in handcuffs.”

The pit was 2 meters deep and wide, with a grate laid on top. Then they’d drive up a KamAZ truck with a water tank—used to deliver water to the troops—and flood the pit right up to the grate.

“So the guy just, like a fish, tried to gulp air through the grate. That’s how the commanders tormented them there.”

Those punished died gradually: they were pulled out alive, but after several hours in cold water, “naturally, you get pneumonia, kidney swelling, and all that follows.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll be sent to the hospital. That depended on the commander’s mood. If not, you go back to the positions—and what medicine is there on the positions? Nothing but bandages and promethol. So he just dies there from pulmonary edema or kidney failure.”

In the pits, people don’t just sit—they kill each other too. This is recounted by former serviceman Yuri from the 114th Motorized Rifle Brigade.

“When a person starts asking questions about pay, or starts complaining, they lock him in a pit with a grate too,” explains brigade soldier Yuri.

“They don’t give him water or food, beat him two, three, four times a day every day—pull him out and beat him. And there are a lot of such people. Some die right there in the pit.”

To cover up such a zeroing, the corpse is “just tossed to the front line and shot somewhere,” as if killed in action, the soldier says.

When two or three people remain in the pit, they’re told: “Guys, want to get out? Then fight. The one left standing gets out.”

“Can you imagine—a comrade who shielded me with his own body, and now I have to fight him, beat him to death. I’d rather die myself. Do you understand the situation there?” says Yuri.

🔽

‼️ This is an absolute must-read for people who want to understand what's happening (for real) in Russia. Granted this post comes from a Russian military blogger who sees the war through her own distorted prism but nonetheless, she is very honest about what plagues the Russian Army.

“Kursk region: problems, fakes, corruption.

Since August 11, I have not written anything about the enemy's invasion of the Kursk region. And what can I say if the Defense Ministry's post calls the seizure of part of the Kursk region's territory an "attempted invasion."

Official newspeak, and in fact lies and a general misunderstanding of what is happening from the very bottom to the very top, forces you to just do your job and not communicate with morons.

Most importantly, I did not want to interfere with our guys working - pushing the enemy out, and I watched what others were writing.

My findings, like for any sane person in the country who is without panic and without "we will soon reach Warsaw", that is, are real facts.

So, let's start with February 2022, what preceded the transfer of military action to the territory of the Russian Federation, and was it really so secret.

Part 1. The General Staff's problems with calculations.

The New York Times, and some journalists and media outlets focused on laundering a certain group in power, report that the Kursk operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces was a top secret.

So top secret that a year ago, far-sighted people, those with brains in their heads and not instructions, said that Ukraine would move the front to Russian territory.

That is, to the territory of the regions of our country bordering Ukraine (so to speak, the territory of ‘old Russia’) - Belgorod, Kursk, Bryansk.

The front line from 2022 (Kherson, Zaporozhye, LPR, DPR) was somewhere around 1,200 kilometers.

At the very beginning, there were miscalculations that when we entered on February 24, everyone would greet us with flowers.

Yes, yes, those people who burned Russians in the Trade Union House in Odesa, and were reinforced by "Azov", "Kraken" and other formations - will be glad to see the military with the Russian tricolor.

Only people with deep schizophrenia who have long been out of touch with reality can think like that.

At the beginning of 2022, our guys were getting destroyed, no command to shoot back was issued from Moscow, so our army lost personnel and equipment.

This led to the fact that our army, which had already suffered losses, could not hold an extended front with a trained enemy army.

The Wagner PMC was called in for help and the international Special Forces "Akhmat" was created under the leadership of Apti Alaudinov.

But even here there was not enough regular army, Akhmat and Wagner are fighting guys, but there were too few of them, and again miscalculation and lies led to the fact that the Ukrainian side harshly pressured us in early September with their Kharkiv counteroffensive - Izyum, Balakleya, Liman happened.

We "regrouped" so much that we left the locals and our own surrounded. Wounded soldiers woke up in hospitals after anesthesia and the Armed Forces of Ukraine were already standing over them.

And again, it turns out that Ukraine was preparing for war, it turns out that the counteroffensive was being prepared, but for some reason the military leadership did not attach importance to all the information. They had to carry out mobilization in September 2022.

And then the miscalculations came one after another. Equipment and uniforms were stolen/sold/resold/not even manufactured, the machine guns were rusty, Mosin rifles were issued.

There was no communication, the spools from the Great Patriotic War were issued. The first mobilized were sent to the front after a few weeks, completely untrained, to plug the holes.

Again, a loss of resources, its waste, replenishment of the exchange fund for the enemy, since holes remained, and people were running out.
🔽 Global problems with payments, treatments, and rehabilitations began. All this was spread by word of mouth, which caused the outflow of volunteers to the front.

While the incompetent commanders were wasting people and equipment, social problems such as non-issuance of combat veteran statuses, non-payment for injuries, non-payment for combat action and much, much more were simply not resolved.

The government, the State Duma, the Federation Council, as institutions of power, refrained from the topic of SMO. Only a small part of the elite actively joined the work.

The situation was worsened by the fact that the absolute majority of our 300s were from drones, the need for which was denied by the military and officials aged 60+.

At this time, the volunteers supplied the army with drones, thermal imagers, uniforms, camouflage nets, logs, weapons, cars, and even water and food.

Part 2. General Staff problems with calculations

Problems with shells have also led and continue to lead to irrational waste of human resources. The battles near Vugledar, Avdiivka and Maryinka clearly demonstrated how not to do it. And in other areas, they sent people into assault without proper artillery training.

In areas where commanders were not distinguished by their intelligence and resourcefulness, they forced soldiers to fight because they wanted to get awarded the Hero (of Russia) or had take a village with three destroyed houses by a certain date.

Such commanders arranged formations near the line of contact, arranged "choral" singing for 100-150 people. We all know how this ends.

The enemy was watching all this. They saw how the smaller resources deployed by the RF Armed Forces was thoughtlessly wasted compared to them. And therefore the enemy began to create additional hotbeds of conflict in order to stretch the front even more.

So that we constantly pulled forces from one place to another, thereby creating gaps in the defense of the territories we had already occupied.

Is this a secret move by Ukraine? No, it is quite natural and logical. The question is not about them, but why did we allow this?

We knew that Ukraine could not resist Russia along the front line, which was imposed by the RF Armed Forces, but it was as if we deliberately did not protect our borders, allowing the enemy into our territory.

And Ukraine took the path of transferring the acute phase of the conflict to territories where there is no SMO, seeing that there is no one to resist them there.

First, they entered Belgorod, drawing our forces from other directions, now they have created a hotbed in the Kursk region, also drawing forces from other directions.

In the meantime, Russia seems to be deliberately weakening its front. When human resources were running out due to wrong decisions and systemic problems, the task was set to take volunteers, since the country did not dare to mobilize again.

In the first wave, volunteers went themselves, but then there were fewer and fewer of them, and the quality of the soldiers was getting lower. But there was a recruitment plan and it’s still there.

When the number of those who volunteered for a contract began to decline, they began to agitate or force the mobilized to switch to a contract basis and thus reported on the replenishment of contract soldiers, although in fact the number of people did not increase.

They tried to increase the recruitment of soldiers through the Wagner recruitment structure, but some recruiters simply began to trade in people, cooperating with military registration and enlistment offices and local administrations.

And good fighters with specialties - artilleryman, grenade launchers, signalmen, tank crewmen and so on - fell into the hands of the "butchers" and were immediately sent to the assault, so we lost a lot of qualified military personnel.

‼️‼️‼️Excerpts from an article by Medusa about Ukrainian children in Russia.

This article explains the institutionalized brainwashing Ukrainian children are subjected to and it uncovers Russia’s future plan - to make an industry importing Ukrainian children into Russia.

It also gives a clue as to why the Russian State Duma wants to lower the age of kids going to jail for sabotage from 16 to 14.

“The exact number of Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia during the war is unknown - according to Kyiv, we are talking about almost 20,000.

Russian officials are persuading Ukrainian children to forget about their homeland - and convince them that their parents will never come to take them home.

The authorities are confident that they will be able to "re-educate" the stolen children.

To find out how this system works, the special correspondent of "Medusa" Lilia Yapparova studied thousands of documents and talked to employees of the Russian Ministry of Education, the main department responsible for the "indoctrination" of Ukrainian children.

"Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes! - nationalist greeting."

"Katsaps, vatniki is a derogatory nickname of representatives of Russian nationality."

"Rashism is the unofficial name of the political ideology and social practice of the ruling regime of Russia at the beginning of the 21st century <...> The term was invented by Russophobes."

"The Marauder Federation - [so] Russophobes and extremists call the Russian Federation."

"Orcs - used by Russophobes and extremists for the offensive name of Russian servicemen"

These are quotes from a dictionary compiled in 2022 by the Ministry of Education of Russia. It is addressed to school teachers - so that they know what "signs of extremism on a nationalist basis" words and expressions Ukrainian children might use.”

Now Russian teachers face the task of "reorienting and establishing the Russian identity of the younger generation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions," the documents say.

Examples of such "reorientation" are also given in them. For example, they are told about a schoolgirl from Zaporizhzhia, who published on social networks "a video of the burning of the Russian flag with anti-Russian comments" - and immediately became a defendant in a criminal case.

It is possible to prevent such "destructive manifestations" in Ukrainian children at the earliest stages, according to the department. Above all, immediately after they are taken out of Ukraine.

As stated in the specially developed manual "Accompanying teenagers who arrived from combat zones", such children can show "protest", "capriciousness", "distrust of adults", behave aggressively, express "ideas of personal superiority" - as well as in general "experience difficulties in looking at situations through the eyes of a neutral observer".

Teachers should help such a child who, according to the department, is already defitient when it comes to "knowledge" and "social skills", that are "present by default in Russian children."

The training manual says:

If you know that the child's family members died or went missing during the hostilities, [in your communication with the child] focus not on people, but on events...

Don't say "it's nothing terrible," "don't worry, they're in a better place," "they're looking at you from heaven"... Honestly tell the child that his loved ones have died or his house is destroyed... Say directly that they're dead.

Give the child the opportunity to go through the emotions. For example, if he's angry, let him tear paper.

As a result, the schoolchild should feel "a sense of pride in his country, patriotism, a sense of belonging to the country."”

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#Ukraine #Russia #RussiaIsANaziState #RussialsATerroristState #RissiaUkraineWar “The recommendations do not specify which country to be proud of. And since the war is the only reason why children found themselves in Russia - the manual of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation describes it as follows: "the complication of the geopolitical situation <...> prompting families <...> to forced resettlement."”

"Re-education" of Ukrainian children "on the basis of spiritual and moral values, historical and national-cultural traditions of the Russian Federation" has to last until graduation. As a result, teenagers should "form a Russian identity."

The source of "Medusa" in the Ministry of Education, who is well acquainted with the text of these manuals, calls them "intense b*llshit":

"Say they're dead," it's f*cked up. If a child does not know about the fate of his relatives, a simple "they died" is almost the worst thing to say. You need to find out first what the child knows about their fate, how he assesses their chances for the future, whether it makes sense to keep hope...

Nowhere is it argued why integration was chosen from the strategies [of working with Ukrainian children]. If we try to integrate children into our culture, it means no intention to return them to their native culture is even implied.

Moreover, [in theory] integration takes place in the environment of multiculturalism - where cultural diversity and respect for the culture of the non-dominant group are allowed. And now try to show respect for the Ukrainian language, anthem, coat of arms and you’d go to jail! Therefore, the integration of these children is impossible. Rather, it's about assimilation or marginalization.

The source in the department notes that the Ministry is concerned about the "integration" of Ukrainian children not only because it is instructed to do so.

The Ministry of Education is really afraid of them: "In our conversations Ukrainian children are potential terrorists. We are not morons - and we understand that Russia did not come to Ukraine "with peace and kindness." And that children who were taken from there to a hostile environment may begin to resist.
Maybe with the support from their Ukrainian relatives...

Behind the scenes, we argue this way, even at the level of leadership. But at the round tables, of course, they say that "Ukrainian children are the most wonderful."

The source adds that at the end of 2022, employees of the Ministry of Education began to prepare for potential terrorist attacks and sabotage directed specifically against their department.

The documents studied by Medusa include "armed attack" (including "using flammable liquids"), "hostage-taking", "explosive devices", "arson", "unmanned aircraft attack" among the threats.

The head of the federal charitable foundation, which also helps orphans, also heard about such fears (he talked to "Medusa" on condition of anonymity):

"The office understands that the integration of Ukrainian teenagers is an explosive situation, and they try to instruct both teachers and everyone else," he says. “Our schoolchildren are also pumped up with ideas about "fascists are in Ukraine" - and then suddenly a real "ukrofascist" is brought to their classroom”.

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