Newly surfaced videos appear to show Russian military commanders beating and humiliating their own soldiers, a pattern of internal abuse that continues even as Ukrainian forces claim significant territorial gains in the Donetsk region.
Three separate clips, reported by The Sun, depict Russian soldiers subjected to physical punishment by their own commanders. In the first, a soldier described as Belarusian hangs upside down from a tree while a commander strikes him with a stick. Reports suggest the soldier may have refused to fight, an act that under Russian military law can be treated as a capital offense. The commander addresses the soldier with a derogatory ethnic slur and warns him directly.
"I'll make mashed potatoes of you. You get it?" the commander says in the footage.
A second video shows a soldier being kicked repeatedly. No context for the beating is provided. A third clip depicts a soldier from Bashkortostan, a Russian republic in the Ural Mountains, being struck on his bare backside with a stick. His alleged offense: failing to contribute money so his unit could purchase drones.
"So you've decided to save money by not chipping in, for ****'s sake! Your mates are scraping together their last pennies for drones, for ****'s sake.... They're chipping in, for ****'s sake!"
The Bashkir soldier's response, audible in the footage: "I'll chip in, I'll chip in!"
That third video deserves a second look. A Russian soldier was physically punished not for desertion, not for insubordination, but for failing to spend his own money on military drones. The scene suggests a force so poorly supplied that individual troops are expected to fund their own battlefield technology, and face violence when they don't.
Earlier footage from this year showed another incident: a soldier taped to a tree upside down in freezing conditions near the Russian front line. That clip was described at the time as punishment for a fighter labeled "mutinous." The new videos join what The Sun describes as a rising number of similar punishment clips circulating from the Russian military, though no specific count or authentication source is provided.
The brutality is not limited to internal discipline. A British prisoner of war filed a lawsuit against the Russian state in April, alleging he was starved, beaten, and electrocuted during captivity. The case has been described as a landmark legal action, though the court, the prisoner's identity, and the case number remain unreported.
That lawsuit fits a broader, well-documented pattern. The New York Post reported that four Ukrainian women who survived Russian captivity described systematic torture, sexual abuse, and forced nudity in freezing conditions. Ukraine's prosecutor general has stated that nine out of ten returning prisoners of war show signs of physical and psychological torture. The United Nations has documented nearly fifty detention centers opened by Russia since the February 2022 invasion.
One of those women, 32-year-old military medic Valentyna Zubko, described the conditions plainly:
"Every day, your only task is to survive. We were like skeletons."
Kyiv has separately reported that Russian forces have executed hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war since 2022, a charge that puts the internal abuse of Russia's own troops in even starker relief.
While the videos expose dysfunction inside the Russian ranks, Ukrainian forces are pressing an offensive in the Donetsk region. Ukraine announced Operation Vivaldi on September 15, though reporting indicates planning began in the spring. Ukrainian officials claim the operation has liberated 40 square kilometers and recaptured several villages, though the specific village names have not been disclosed.
The offensive represents a notable shift. For months, the Donetsk front had been characterized by grinding Russian advances. Ukraine's willingness to launch a named operation and claim territorial gains suggests a force that believes it holds at least local initiative, even as Western debates over military aid continue.
A Washington Examiner report detailed testimony from a Ukrainian woman from Kherson who told House lawmakers that Russian captors forced her to dig her own grave, the kind of firsthand account that has shaped congressional debate over continued support for Ukraine.
Drone warfare has become central to the conflict on both sides. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll recently warned from Kyiv that the U.S. military risks falling behind on drone technology, a concern underscored by footage showing Russian soldiers beaten for not personally funding drone purchases for their units.
The Russian military's treatment of its own soldiers has drawn international attention before. Mass graves discovered in Izyum after Ukrainian forces liberated the city in September 2022 contained bodies with signs of rope strangulation, bound hands, broken limbs, burn wounds, and mutilation. Russian forces also conducted armed door-to-door votes in occupied cities, forcing residents at gunpoint to approve annexation into Russia.
Vladimir Putin has threatened broader conflict with Europe if foreign troops enter Ukraine, even as evidence mounts that his own forces cannot maintain basic discipline or supply their troops with standard equipment. The gap between Moscow's rhetoric and the reality on the ground, soldiers hanging from trees, beaten for pocket change, tells its own story.
Congress has taken steps to hold Moscow accountable. The House passed a Russia sanctions bill by a vote of 262 to 159, overcoming opposition from Democratic leaders who attempted to block the measure.
Several key questions remain unanswered. No independent source has verified the authenticity of the torture videos or identified where they were originally published. The identities of the soldiers and commanders in the footage are unknown. And no reporting indicates whether any Russian military authority has investigated or disciplined anyone involved.
An army that beats its own men for not buying drones out of their own pockets is not projecting strength. It is advertising collapse, and the Ukrainians advancing through Donetsk appear to have noticed.
