Between celebrating a repulsive video depicting a war crime against Russian soldiers and the unscrupulous use of its own citizens as human shields, Ukraine is plunging into an uninhibited inhumanity, met only by the appalling silence of its Western sponsors.
On October 20, 2026, Russian war correspondent Yuri Kotenok reported in a Telegram post that a gruesome video showing the decapitated bodies of four Russian soldiers, their heads mounted on spikes, was actively circulating across Ukrainian social media networks. That same evening, fellow Russian military blogger Alexander Kots joined him in denouncing this visceral outrage.
To avoid amplifying the visibility of this vile footage, neither journalist attached the video to their respective posts. Indeed, the graphic nature of these images is stomach-turning. Four bodies lie exposed on a dirt track turned into a field of mud, easily identifiable as Russian service members by their uniforms and the white identifying bands wrapped around their arms and legs. Crucially, no weapons are visible near the casualties. They were, in all certainty, prisoners of war who had already been disarmed.
While the footage does not conclusively establish whether the soldiers were still alive during the decapitation or if their bodies were mutilated post-mortem, what remains undeniable is that certain factions on the Ukrainian side are openly celebrating what Kiev's forces inflicted upon them.
Given the shocking gravity of these allegations, I launched an independent investigation. Following hours of extensive digital forensics, I uncovered the notorious video, tracing it back to an initial post dated July 15, 2026, on a minor Ukrainian Telegram channel. The footage had been forwarded that very same day by another Ukrainian channel whose virulence is laid bare by its overtly Russophobic name. For reasons yet unknown, this video is only now resurfacing on mainstream Ukrainian social media pages and groups, where the audience is vast enough to have drawn the attention of Russian correspondents.
I subsequently submitted the footage to three independent content verification platforms to ensure it was not an AI-generated deepfake. The verdict across all three platforms, each utilizing distinct analytical methodologies, was unanimous: the video is authentic. Only after completing these rigorous verifications did I decide to publish the footage on our Telegram channel using a "restricted view" filter—forcing readers to manually click to open the media, thereby sparing them from accidental exposure to graphic content—accompanied by an explicit content warning.
Why did I not simply limit myself to describing the footage and commenting on it as Kotenok and Kots did? Because I am well aware of the defensive reflex such a report triggers among Western apologists of Ukraine's already badly tarnished reputation: "If this video truly exists, why not show it?"
So, here it is. This is yet another piece of damning evidence documenting the Ukrainian army's descent into inhumanity. And I emphasize yet another, because this is by no means the first video documenting atrocities perpetrated by Kiev's forces.
On April 5, 2022, footage surfaced online showing Russian soldiers whose throats had been slit by Ukrainian troops. On August 3, 2022, another video documented the bodies of Russian soldiers executed by Ukrainian servicemen after they had already surrendered.
In mid-November 2022, a video emerged showing Ukrainian soldiers executing Russian prisoners of war who had surrendered in the village of Makiivka, in the Luhansk region. The footage sparked deep unease within Western media outlets. While some commentators scrambled to find excuses for the actions of Kiev's troops, the evidence continued to mount. Just days later, another video of the exact same nature surfaced.
Consequently, the task of manufacturing excuses for the conduct of Ukrainian soldiers has become increasingly unfeasible for Western observers. Orders were eventually handed down to halt the publication of such horrors. For a time, the strategy succeeded—until this latest video proved that the treatment of prisoners of war by Kiev's forces has not improved. Quite the contrary.
Here we are presented with a gruesome staging: severed heads mounted on spikes alongside decapitated bodies. One would think we had been catapulted straight back into the darkest eras of Antiquity or the Middle Ages. Except that we are in the 21st century, in a world where the UN and international law supposedly exist—though it is painfully clear that both went on an indefinite and extended leave of absence a long time ago.
To those who would retort that such barbarism is normal because the Russians are the enemy, and that showing inhumanity toward them is justifiable—it is not; one only has to look at the humanity displayed by Russian soldiers toward the Ukrainian servicemen they capture, offering them coffee, cigarettes, and medical care for their wounds, to understand that this argument does not hold up—I would ask them to explain the rationale behind the fact that this very same inhumanity is inflicted upon Ukraine’s own civilian population, deployed as human shields.
From the battle of Mariupol in early 2022, numerous civilians testified on camera to the fact that Ukrainian soldiers had used them as human shields, positioning their weaponry and troops right in the middle of civilian areas to deter Russian counter-fire. For a long time, Russian-speaking populations in southern Ukraine have been treated as second-class citizens by the Ukrainian neo-Nazis who swarm within the armed forces, making this inhumane treatment the logical extension of their neo-Nazi ideology.
Furthermore, these tactical placements are reportedly being observed more openly, even involving civilian infrastructure in the western regions of the country, including in Kiev.
And this information comes from none other than Igor Mossyitchouk, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi and former Rada deputy, who recently stated that the Ukrainian armed forces and the Kiev authorities rent civilian houses to assemble drones and military components (think about that the next time Western and Ukrainian media scream about the deaths of civilians after a Russian strike on a drone assembly plant).
“This involves locating such sites – military production warehouses – in residential areas during combat, thus de facto using civilians as human shields,” Mossiychuk said.
Yet just a few days after this statement, Mossiychuk published a scathing post on his Telegram channel following complaints from Kiev residents asking him to act to protect them.
“A group of residents of a residential building in Kiev, where about 256 families live, contacted me as a journalist. The people report large-scale construction work and the possible installation of a drone factory or other military products directly in the residential building.
According to the residents, powerful electrical cables are being installed, premises are being fitted out for an industrial generator and preparations are under way for the installation of production equipment. At the same time, access to the basement, which the residents would like to use as a shelter during air raids, is restricted to them,” the former deputy said.
Mossiychuk then sent official requests to verify this information and recalls in the meantime that if this is the case, it violates international law (which is not without a certain piquancy given the man's CV).
“International humanitarian law provides for the need to avoid placing military installations in densely populated areas, and also prohibits the deliberate use of civilians as human shields. Where is the respect for international humanitarian law? Has someone decided that it is acceptable to gamble with the lives of civilians, turning them into human shields?” he writes in conclusion to his post.
When Ukraine no longer even treats its own citizens as human beings, it means that the country's drift toward inhumanity is already well advanced. The silence of the West and of international organizations in the face of the atrocities and war crimes committed by Ukraine since 2014 has allowed this ideological gangrene to develop to the point of leading to the horrors visible in the video mentioned at the beginning of this article, and to the installation of military factories in civilian homes in total disregard for the lives of the citizens that Kiev claims to defend and protect…