On July 28, pro-Russian social media published a series of violent videos showing the castration and execution of an alleged Ukrainian prisoner of war by Russian fighters in Ukraine. Those turned out to be members of a Chechen-led paramilitary group Akhmat fighting with the Russian army.
Using evidence from the three violent videos and additional footage of the ‘Akhmat’ fighters, Bellingcat geolocated the footage to the Pryvillia Sanatorium in Ukraine’s easternmost Luhansk Oblast.
The Russian member of the Akhmat unit turned out to be from Siberia.
I talked to more than 20 minutes to the suspected executioner. It was blood-curdling, as he lost himself in contradictions and untruths, yet was trying to convince me that "the video is a fake, the FSB told me so."
— Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) August 5, 2022
The Russian media The Insider which says it had participated in the investigation named the major suspect, Ochur-Suge Mongush from Tyva, born in 1993.