Soldier shooting wounded comrade in video is Russian, not Ukrainian as pro-Kremlin media claimed, journalists find

Last month, drone footage of a soldier shooting one of his fellow servicemen in the head was shared widely by Russian state-funded and pro-Kremlin media, with Russian propagandists claiming the soldiers were Ukrainian. But a new investigation from RFE/RL’s Russian investigative unit Systema and the news outlet Current Time, which relies on a higher-resolution version of the video and interviews with the drone operators involved, indicates that the men in the clip are actually Russian soldiers. Meduza breaks down the evidence.

The RFE/RL projects Systema and Current Time have released a new investigation into the death of a soldier who was shot by one of his fellow servicemen in the village of Robotyne in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region. Low-resolution drone footage of the shooting was widely disseminated by Russian pro-war Telegram channels as well as on the state-controlled TV network Rossiya-24, where Russian propagandists claimed the soldiers were Ukrainian and that the video shows their “animalistic nature” and “fascist ideology.”

Current Time and Systema obtained the original, higher-resolution footage from Ukraine’s 118th Mechanized Brigade, which launched the drone that took the video. The journalists identified several signs that the soldiers shown in the clip were Russian and not Ukrainian.

The video shows three soldiers in camouflage clothing with no identifying marks running down a road. A drone explodes next to one of them, causing him to fall to the ground, apparently wounded. One of the other servicemen then walks up to the wounded soldier, who points to his own head. The standing soldier then shoots the wounded serviceman in the head. The soldier who is wounded and then killed in the video does not appear to have any weapons at any point.

Warning: The video below contains violence. Viewer discretion is advised.

In the original, high-resolution version of the video, journalists spotted the following details, which are indiscernible in the low-resolution version:

• The killed soldier is wearing underwear from the Chinese brand BOKAI, which is very common in Russia. This underwear used to be sold in Ukraine, but has become nearly impossible to find in the last two years.
• The pants worn by the soldiers in the video resemble ones from the clothing line A-Tacs FG, which is worn by Russian servicemen. However, pants of the same color pattern can also be purchased in Ukrainian stores.
• The rifle used in the video is an AK-12, which Russia’s Kalashnikov Concern arms manufacturer began producing in 2018. Other videos from pro-Kremlin outlets have shown Russian soldiers using AK-12s in Robotyne, where this video was taken. However, Ukrainian troops are also known to have captured some of these rifles from Russian forces.

Journalists from Current Time also obtained footage recorded by the Ukrainian drone that struck the soldier in the video. The video shows the moment of the strike. “The existence of the second video is a clear indication that the entire scenario was not staged,” they write in their analysis. (Some Russian pro-war bloggers previously alleged that the original video was a “Ukrainian fake.”)

The journalists spoke to two drone operators from the 118th Brigade who witnessed the shooting, including the one who filmed the widely-shared video. He said that he initially saw four men in a trench, one of whom appeared to be dead. When the drone approached them, the other three men jumped up and ran. The drone then struck the man in the center.

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The drone operator recounted:

It was clear that he wasn’t going to get back up, that his legs were broken, and that there was no way an evacuation team would reach him. His comrade was running next to him, and he gestured with his hand: “Please kill me.” I was a bit shocked. I mean, that’s your brother in arms. And you kill him, just like that. You could have at least pulled him over into the bushes.

The journalists also spoke to the operator of the drone that injured the man. According to him, the two soldiers who survived the initial strike ran and hid in bushes, but Ukrainian forces soon hit them with another drone. He said that none of the three men shown in the video survived, though Systema and Current Time were unable to independently confirm this.