Horrific footage shows how Vladimir Putin‘s uniformed thugs force wounded soldiers to return to the war with brutal beatings and threats of rape.
Video shows a military police officer beating a traumatised soldier with a truncheon before tasing him with a stun gun in the Russian region of Tuva.
The thug, nicknamed ‘Mad’, is seen torturing injured personnel ostensibly in an effort to get them to return to the Ukrainian frontlines.
The male victims are heard being threatened with being forced to strip and ‘rape’.
One of the soldiers in the video ‘had his spine broken, he is in serious condition’, says social activist Vitaly Borodin, who highlighted the shocking video.
One man is seen with a walking stick due to his war wounds.
Ukraine estimates that as many as 812,670 Russians have been killed or injured in nearly three years of gruelling conflict.
The Russian authorities only acted to investigate the abuse after the footage went viral, although frequent complaints of such brutality by Putin’s enforcers go unnoticed.
The regional government insisted it was looking into allegations of gross abuse of Russian mobilised men before they were sent back to the war.
‘The Tuva government has taken control of the investigation into incidents involving servicemen from the republic after a number of video recordings were distributed in regional groups on social networks and messengers,’ a statement read.
‘One of them reports that on January 16, 2025, cases of cruel treatment of contract soldiers were recorded in military unit No. 55115, including beatings and the use of electric shockers before they were sent to the [war] zone.’
The authorities said ‘the perpetrators have been identified and a preliminary investigation is being conducted against them.’
The main suspect was ‘detained and placed in custody’, according to Russia’s Central Military District.
Officials said the military unit could be disbanded following the appalling scenes.
Putin’s former speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov – now strongly opposed to the Kremlin dictator – said today: ‘The culprit was arrested.
‘Only he was arrested not for beatings, but for failing to prevent the leak of the sensational video.
‘The system does not need scandals, they interfere with the influx of fresh cannon fodder.
‘Some potential ‘hero’ will watch this video – and change his mind about going to the front.
‘Can this be allowed? Of course not.’
There was a claim that the suspects were assault soldiers seconded to the military police ‘to ensure law and order among those sent to the [war] zone’.
Remote and mountainous Tuva in Siberia is the home region of Putin’s security council chief Sergei Shoigu, formerly the Russian defence minister.
Russia has also long been accused of torturing its Ukrainian prisoners of war.
Analysis by Global Rights Compliance in 2023 revealed that almost half of Ukrainian detainees held in camps in Kherson had been subjected to torture and sexual violence.
Analysis of cases across more than 35 identified detention centres revealed suffocation, waterboarding, electrocution, beatings and threats of rape to be widespread techniques imposed by Russian guards in the occupied region.
Global Rights Compliance’s Mobile Justice Team reviewed the stories of 320 people held in Kherson with Ukraine‘s Office of the Prosecutor General (OPG), with 43% reporting experiences of torture from their time detained.
Those held in the centres included volunteers, activists, medical leaders, teachers, community leaders, law enforcement and military personnel.
Wayne Jordash KC, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Global Rights Compliance, said at the time: ‘The torture and sexual violence tactics the Office of the Prosecution is uncovering from the Kherson detention centres suggests that Putin’s plan to extinguish Ukrainian identity includes a range of crimes evocative of genocide.
‘At the very least, the pattern that we are observing is consistent with a cynical and calculated plan to humiliate and terrorise millions of Ukrainian citizens in order to subjugate them to the diktat of the Kremlin.’
Global Rights Compliance said that the reported ‘patterns’ of rape and other sexual crimes inflicted upon occupied people across Ukraine may point to a ‘premeditated plan on a systemic level’.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of war crimes in Kherson since at least November 2022.
Mass graves have been found across Ukraine since the start of the war in February last year.
