The clip, posted on a pro-Russian account on Telegram, shows a man in a Ukrainian uniform with his hands tied behind his back pinned down, while a man in a Russian uniform and a black hat uses what look like bolt cutters to apparently castrate him.
Newsweek has not independently verified the footage but The Times of London’s assistant foreign editor, Maxim Tucker, has tweeted that the video is “genuine” according to the investigative website Bellingcat.
Tucker posted that Bellingcat said “the same soldier appeared on a Russian TV clip (with same hat and bracelet) and there was no evidence the video had been manipulated.”
While Yahoo News cannot independently verify the authenticity of the video, the footage, which was initially posted on a pro-Russian Telegram page before spreading rapidly on social media, showed what appears to be a Russian soldier or mercenary wearing a distinctive black fringed hat, mutilating a man who appears to be a captured Ukrainian soldier.
The victim in the video wears Ukrainian-style camouflage fatigues and is shown gagged, his hands tied behind his back. He lies helpless on the floor as the man in a Russian uniform, which features a “Z” patch, uses a box cutter to cut off his clothes and then appears to castrate him while shouting degrading insults in Russian. At least two other men who appear to be Russian soldiers can be seen in the video.
While it is unclear when the video was filmed, what appears to be the same man wearing the black fringed hat also appeared in a June broadcast by the Russian state-backed media outlet RT. In that clip, the apparent soldier can be seen carrying a Dragunov sniper rifle as he walks around the Azot chemical plant in the city of Severodonetsk after the Ukrainian withdrawal from the city. In a post that was published on the RIA Novosti Telegram channel, the Russian news agency identified the man as part of the Chechen “Akhmat” battalion of the Russian army.
Toler said a Russian soldier wearing the same distinctive black hat and wristband as the man in the video had previously appeared in a clip at the Azot chemicals plant in the eastern city of Sievierodonetsk aired by the Kremlin-backed RT broadcaster.
Some observers claimed the man is a part of the Chechen Akhmat Battalion that is shown in a clip published by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency, while others alleged he was from Russia’s republic of Kalmykia.
Some pro-Kremlin figures dismissed the castration video as fake, claiming that Ukrainian forces “were given a command to execute” Russian prisoners of war and “there are enough facts of torture and castrations of Russian servicemen.”
I saw a short video of the castration, it was pretty disturbing to me, but if you must it’s on twitter posted by UkeTube.
