RIA Novosti report helps ID a man shown in Ukrainian POW torture video

A video which showed a Ukrainian POW being tortured, supposedly filmed at the Azot plant seized by Russian troops in June, has surfaced online. The footage was published by the Moscow Calling Telegram channel, among others.

The channels claim the video shows, among others, an Akhmat fighter. According to other reports, he is a member of the volunteer battalion North formed in Chechnya. The footage shows the fighter castrating a bound soldier lying on the ground with a clerical knife. When the soldier tries to resist, he is kicked on the head and held down.

Later, a man in the video, who took part in the torture, was identified via a RIA Novosti report, in which he appeared in the same cowboy hat. The clip with him was posted in the Telegram channel on June 27. In the report, Akhmat soldiers and members of the «LNR People's Militia» talk about the «mopping up» of the Azot plant.

Earlier, the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on war crimes committed by the Russian army in the occupied territories of southern Ukraine. The document refers to the torture, kidnapping and murder of civilians and prisoners of war in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Dozens of people from Kherson, Melitopol, Berdyansk, Skadovsk, and ten other cities confirmed to the human rights activists the facts of torture and possible involvement of the military in the disappearance of civilians.