A sickening clip has shown two wounded Russian soldiers being brutally beaten with clubs – apparently for refusing to risk their lives in so-called “meat assaults”.
The phrase refers to the practice of sending waves of poorly armed and minimally trained troops into heavily defended Ukrainian positions to exhaust the defenders and identify weak points.
And, posting on X, Anton Geraschenko, a former adviser to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, shared a clip in which soldiers cower under a rain of heavy blows, claiming they were being “punished for their refusal to go into ‘meat assaults’”.
Mr Geraschenko added: “The video was reportedly filmed in Kyzyl (Tyva republic of Russia) and shows soldiers of the 55th motor rifle brigade being abused.
“It is reported that a military policeman, callsign ‘Mad’, beats up two soldiers who refused to take part in suicide assaults after they were wounded from previous combat work. One of them can no longer walk.
This is not the first video of such treatment for Russian soldiers that appears online. So that is probably more of a systemic tactics in the Russian army.”
In the clip, which Express.co.uk has opted not to share in full, at least one of the victims is carrying what appears to be a walking stick.
Meat assaults have been characterised by their high casualty rates, with soldiers often used as cannon fodder in a manner reminiscent of the worst attritional battles of the First World War.
While this approach has occasionally yielded limited territorial gains, it has come at the cost of significant human losses.
The most prominent of these was the partial mobilisation announced by President Vladimir Putin in September 2022, which sought to call up 300,000 reservists. This marked Russia’s first mobilisation since the Second World War and led to widespread unrest, with reports of chaotic organisation, insufficient training, and inadequate equipment for the recruits.
Many Russian men fled the country to avoid conscription, highlighting the unpopularity of the campaign among parts of the population.
In addition to mobilisation, Russia has turned to its penal system to bolster its fighting forces. The Wagner Group, a private military company with close ties to the Kremlin, played a leading role in recruiting convicts from Russian prisons.
